It should not take a tragedy to get Moggill Road made safe
Monday, 25 August 2008 10:00
On Friday night we saw the loss of the life of a young student that has left our local community shocked and angry.
She died crossing the road to catch a bus in Bellbowrie on a stretch of road that local residents and their elected representatives have been strongly urging the Government to make safe for many years.
Councillor Margaret de Wit, myself and local residents have conducted a campaign for the best part of a decade to have Moggill Road at Bellbowrie made safe. Our every effort has been ignored by the State Government.
In fact, there is not one single safe pedestrian crossing anywhere on Moggill Road between Kenmore and Moggill State School, despite the danger particularly around bus stops.
It should not take the loss of someone’s life to get Government action on road safety
The Government should and must act now to make this dangerous stretch of road safe. It ought not to have taken a tragedy to force their hand.
Shortly after my election in 2004, I made a passionate appeal in Parliament on the 19th August to the Minister to lower the speed limit through Bellbowrie. I pointed out then that the Minister would not tolerate a 70km/h zone through a heavily built up residential area if it were in his own electorate.
The Government ignored that plea as well as letters from as long ago as 2003 by local Councillor Margaret de Wit calling for a pedestrian crossing.
Further repeated requests to lower the speed limit and to establish some form of safe pedestrian crossing in this busy area were also ignored time and time again.
Most recently I wrote again on the 1st May in relation to a pedestrian crossing and sadly only a couple of days prior to this tragedy I posted the Government’s refusal on the website for local residents to see and understand the difficulty we were having getting some commonsense action.
In their response the Government indicated they had measured pedestrian activity in the area at up to 60 pedestrians crossing per hour and they did not believe that was enough to justify a pedestrian crossing!
Surely the safety conditions of the road must be the major determinant of both speed limits and installation of safe pedestrian crossings.
It seems extraordinary the Government would dismiss calls for a crossing because they had counted up to 60 pedestrian movements per hour across the road.
Please support us to get something done before there is another tragedy.