Refusal on table for hospital homes bid
Controversial traffic claims central to concerns
Council planning chiefs have backed colleagues who say a developer’s claim Perth’s roads can cope with another huge development at the site of the former Murray Royal Hospital are “fundamentally wrong”.
They have recommended two of Rivertree Developments’ recent applications to redevelop the hospital’s listed buildings, as well as build dozens of new homes within its grounds, be refused by a committee next week.
It comes after their transport planning colleagues filed an objection to the proposed scheme earlier this year saying a transport assessment accompanying the bids had “seriously” under-represented its likely impact on local roads.
The controversial assessment, completed by consultants Arup, claimed queues on Main Street, Lochie Brae, Gowrie Street and East Bridge Street would only consist of a dozen or so cars at peak times once the proposed 128-home development was fully occupied.
Tony Maric of the council’s transport planning team said the assessment “was not of a standard that we would expect in terms of robustness for an application of this nature” and “fundamentally under-represent[ed] the amount of trips generated by the proposed development.”
The team filed the objection after Bridgend, Gannochy and Kinnoull Community Council described the same transport assessment, which concluded the development would have no “significant” detrimental impact on the above roads, as “an insult to local intelligence” that “should never have been placed in the public domain.”
However Arup has since claimed council officers directed the way it calculated queue lengths in its assessment saying its staff “reluctantly agreed” to use a council approved traffic model and were also “robustly advised” not to use “more contemporary” information to come up with the figures.
Now a report to go before the council’s development management committee next week recommending the two applications be refused states: “Queue length data that has been provided to support the application shows that the junction operates satisfactorily at peak times.
“However, transport planning did not agree with this view and subsequently commissioned traffic surveys carried out in April 2018, where maximum queue lengths of 500m were recorded on East Bridge Street in the AM peak and 300m on Gowrie Street in the PM peak, indicating significant issues with blocking back at the Bridgend junction.
“Local knowledge of the issues at Lochie Brae in the morning peak period was also highlighted in the new surveys with vehicles queued back up Lochie Brae to the junction at Muirhall Road and Gannochy Road.
“Transport planning consider that this application is premature, pending the completion of the Cross Tay Link Road (CTLR) programme. Once the CTLR programme has been completed, transport planning considers that relief would be afforded at the Bridgend junction and capacity would be created, which may allow this site to come forward. ”
The committee meets next Wednesday.