Playing rushin’ roulette on road
Concern for kids’ safety after zebra crossing removed on ‘speedway’
SCHOOL children are running the gauntlet on a northern beaches “drag strip” as their pedestrian crossing was deemed under used and removed.
Holloways Beach resident Robbie Guy watched Cairns Regional Council workers scrape the zebra crossing from Oleander St.
“They came a week and a bit ago and scratched it off,” Mr Guy said.
“What is left is a quarter mile drag strip – how somebody has not been killed, I don’t know.
He said traffic – unhindered by the crossing – treated the road as a speedway.
“Everyone is going 100 miles an hour,” Mr Guy said. “You can hear them go past.”
He said a 60km/h sign was up but had little effect.
The crossing was used by schoolchildren to access a bus stop, and with the crossing now erased, Mr Guy said they risked life and limb by crossing the road.
A Cairns Regional Council email told residents that “an audit found the crossing did not meet the criteria for a zebra crossing.
Under Austroads standards, if a crossing is not used by a number of people over a set period of time, it becomes a danger, as drivers do not expect people to be crossing at this location.”
Mum Amanda Luff said her daughter, Ella, 8, had begun taking the bus to school and now risked crossing an unmarked road.
“We were depending on that crossing for road safety,” Ms Luff said.
“I’ll probably continue to drop her off and pick her up from the stop.
“You see how the other kids cross and she’ll probably follow the older ones – they just bolt across the road.”
A council spokeswoman said the crossing was being moved “to a safer, more appropriate location”.
“The previous crossing did not meet accessibility standards, as it did not have ramp access and is located in front of a tree … (and is) also close to a side street.”