DANGER ZONE ACTION CALL
CALL FOR TURNING LANE WORK TO CUT RISK OF FATALITIES
ALLIGATOR Creek residents fear their community will face further road fatalities on the Bruce Highway as turning lanes off the road are inadequate for increased traffic.
It comes after more reports of near misses at intersections at Alligator Creek Rd and Williams Rd.
The turning lanes on the 100km/h stretch of highway are too short to stop and turn safely, especially when tailed by large trucks and other inattentive drivers.
Residents want to see longer turning lanes or the road widened, with some even calling for speed limit reductions and traffic lights to combat the black spots.
Lindy Collins uses the Williams Rd intersection daily and said the growth in housing was creating larger volumes of traffic at either end of the day.
“They’ve put in all these sub-developments and subdivided all these 30-acre blocks off Williams Rd and Hancock Rd, and the population density is increasing quite phenomenally,” she said.
“It’s great to have developers pay money to council to develop all this land … but we also need infrastructure to go with it and you can’t have one without the other because that’s when people start losing their lives.”
In June last year, a 62-year-old man died at the intersection near the Alligator Creek Caltex after a head-on collision with a people mover trying to turn right that was hit from behind by a truck.
Aaron Sperring lives on Alligator Creek Rd and said he had written letters to Transport and Main Roads but said it was time for the community to start lobbying on the issue.
“Look at how they’ve done the intersection (up the road) at Elliot Springs,” he said.
“The precautions they’ve taken are massive turning lanes and massive merging lanes in and out.
“I compare it to out at Mount Low and Bushland Beach.
“They put 5000 homes out there and 10 years later did up the road to safely get the people in and out of there every day.
“If they could widen the road at some point to make those turning and merging lanes wider it would go a long way.”
The issue is close to the heart of Member for Burdekin Dale Last who lives at Alligator Creek and said repeated calls for help continued to fall on deaf ears.
“TMR has included these particular intersections in their transport infrastructure program and I have personally met with TMR senior management to discuss the prioritisation of these works,” he said.
“The community have organised petitions asking for safety improvements, but the reply is the same; the Government says there is not enough traffic and no real problem.
“Maybe the Minister should front the locals and tell them there are no problems.”