3 March 2009

Traffic changes as they build a brighter Belconnen

| johnboy
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TAMS are trying to explain what they’re doing to traffic in Belconnen as they try to redress the many mistakes of the past.

    As part of the Belconnen Town Centre improvements, Cohen Street will be extended from Lathlain Street through Joynton Smith Drive and the existing bus interchange to Emu Bank. In conjunction with these works, the extension of the Westfield Mall will take place along Lathlain Street and over Joynton Smith Drive.

    The project will also see the existing bus interchange decommissioned on 25 May 2009. During the redevelopment process, temporary bus stations will be located on Cohen Street, Lathlain Street and Cameron Avenue. These bus stations will provide connections to all bus routes passing through the Belconnen Town Centre. Bus patrons wanting to visit the Westfield Belconnen can use the Lathlain Street stop, with other stops further east more suited to people wishing to access offices, the college and community facilities.

    As part of the overall Cohen Street Extension Project a number of new traffic lights will also be installed at key intersections to manage the changed traffic arrangements and improve access for pedestrians and cyclists. New traffic lights include:

    — Benjamin Way/Emu Bank
    — Emu Bank/Eastern Valley Way
    — Cohen Street/Josephson Street
    — Cohen Street/Nettlefold Street
    — Cohen Street/Lathlain Street

For bus user’s there’s a dedicated page explaining the process.

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the traffic lights seem to be operational now.

anyone have any thoughts on this improvement to the town centre?

i personally think it is a waste of money. those areas never get busy enough to warrant traffic lights.

now its just frustrating to motorists driving at night time having to wait for lights to turn green

great, more traffic lights.

they could have at least made a left turn slip lane on eastern valley way turning left onto emu bank. at the moment there doesnt look to be one planned.

p1 said :

Here here!

I think that an actual interchange would have been a much better idea then this. Perhaps moving it, so that it doesn’t have quite the isolated scary feeling that it does now, but Westfield have had the last twenty five years to pretty up the walk in through the Grace Bros. Myer carpark, but never got around to it.

I notice your sly use of the name Grace Bros in your post. Now here is a little bit of history for you. When opened there was no Grace Bros at Belconnen, the shop was in fact a Myer, same too with the car park. Not long after it opened Myer purchased Grace Bros and decided to rebrand all Myer stores in NSW/ACT Grace Bros. If I recall for years after the name was changed to Grace Bros the carpark still carried the Myer Carpark name!

College St seems to be being widened at the moment as well.

The bus interchange has already been blocked off – it isn’t being used. Hence increased traffic along Lathlain.

The current busway really cuts Belconnen in half. I reckon the new layout will really revitalise the upper part of Belconnen around Lathlain & Cohen streets. Whereas for the last couple of decades the mall has made it quite hard for anything to exist outside of their walls (notice that very few businesses have an outward facing presence at the mall?).

It’s happening now (probably end of FY spend, as someone else said), so the only things which may get in the way is Westfield holding up their end of the bargain. The traffic light posts were going in this morning at the top of Cohen street, and it looked like they were about to start laying the new road surface for the western exchange on Cohen street – so maybe the bus interchange will be gone during April as promised!

Oh, and eliminating the bus way is crazy! The chances of a genuine, no stops, no lights, bus way being built anywhere else in the city are f%#@all, and they want to remove the one we DO have.

That is about right. There is NO new interchange at all, just a whole heap of bus stops with the buses being funnelled through Westfield. Even the dedicated bus lane is gone under this new plan. One of the worst decisions I have ever seen in my life. An upgrade of the current interchange would have been given a better overall result to Belco residents. And screw Westfield, it isn’t as if the walk from the current Interchange is all that far, and if they wanted better access they could have made changes to the Myer carpark to faciliate better access.

Here here!

I think that an actual interchange would have been a much better idea then this. Perhaps moving it, so that it doesn’t have quite the isolated scary feeling that it does now, but Westfield have had the last twenty five years to pretty up the walk in through the Grace Bros. Myer carpark, but never got around to it.

Tempestas said :

Its not clear from both the ACTION and the ACTPLA pages, but it looks like you might need to traverse the three Belconnen bus stops to change busses. That is going to majorly suck.
Conversely if every Belconnen bus goes via each of these three stops its going to add serious delays to every bus into and out of Belconnen.

Surely the approach should be, build new interchange, decommision old interchange, let Westfield do what they want afterwards.

That is about right. There is NO new interchange at all, just a whole heap of bus stops with the buses being funnelled through Westfield. Even the dedicated bus lane is gone under this new plan. One of the worst decisions I have ever seen in my life. An upgrade of the current interchange would have been given a better overall result to Belco residents. And screw Westfield, it isn’t as if the walk from the current Interchange is all that far, and if they wanted better access they could have made changes to the Myer carpark to faciliate better access.

A city is more then something you drive through.

Jamie Wheeler1:57 am 04 Mar 09

What’s to fix in Belconnen? They need to look at some serious bottlenecks in North Canberra, such as the Mouat Street/Antil St and Northbourne intersections. I recently started work in Dickson and live southside. It can take 15-20 minutes just to get out of Dickson and to the GDE. When I worked in Belconnen it was a dream in comparison. Dickson parking is also a joke.

Still no confidence in it all.

PM said :

The plans mean this:

Longer bus trips
More traffic
Less parking.

Plus more waiting at traffic lights.

Even more reason to ride my bike to work. I reckon it will be quicker to ride from Dunlop than drive – I reckon Southern Cross Drive will be the next one to get traffic lights around Florey, Page and Scullin. Who ever designed the intersections along that road was on drugs.

Because an unfortunate number of you can’t be trusted.

Anyway you can edit your comments, try the preview button.

‘Centra’ in the above post should read ‘Centre’. Why can’t we edit our comments?

That looks good to me. Belconnen Town Centra has been looking run-down for years, so this should be a change for the better.

Tempestas said :

On the bright side enough businesses in Westfield will probably go broke and we can demolish the whole thing. That might enable a real town centre to be built.

Amen!

After reading through the provided on the planning authority website, it all just sounds like a nice adjunct to the huge expansion of the mall – which would have to be one of the biggest ugliest scars on the Canberran map.

Eeks that Article might mean we end up with a demolished interchange, a set of bus stops along Benjamin way, with other bus stops to the east and west and no complementary development from Westfield.

On the bright side enough businesses in Westfield will probably go broke and we can demolish the whole thing. That might enable a real town centre to be built.

I wonder if, based on this article –

http://business.smh.com.au/business/westfield-defers-projects-as-slump-kicks-in-20090226-8ib8.html

whether Westfield is even going to hold up its end of the bargain any more… I hope John Stanhopeless and crew have the deal in writing.

During the redevelopment process, temporary bus stations will be located on Cohen Street, Lathlain Street and Cameron Avenue.

And after the redevelopment process, there will still not be one relatively central bus interchange, there will be four “bus stations” ranging from one up near the bus depot to one down near Lake Ginninderra College. Gee, that sounds convenient for changing buses…

The work on Aikman Dr is construction of a bus layover area

There’s also a thread on ACT Bus about all of this: http://actbus.net/forum/index.php?topic=1004.0

The plans mean this:

Longer bus trips
More traffic
Less parking.

Thanks for the link, areaman.

While I’m at it, does anyone know what they’re doing on Aikman Drive behind the bowling alley?

p1 said :

Any idea what will happen to the old bus interchange site?

It’s demoted from an interchange to a “stop”.

There’s lots of stuff that’s not clear about this plan. Like, will the new extension of Cohen St be open to cars along it’s entire length? How the heck do you negotiate the Cohen St / Emu Bank intersection? Why does the old section of Cohen St suddenly need three sets of traffic lights but Cohen/Emu Bank and Luxton/Lathlain doesn’t?

Then there’s the sneaky section “6” on the plan, where yet more shops are being built for some unknown reason. Section 2 “Level 3 ext. of Westfield…” so, undercover parking beneath or…?

It’s all in the masterplan, http://www.actpla.act.gov.au/tools_resources/legislation_plans_registers/plans/master_plans/belconnen_town_centre2

The current interchange will still be the biggest bus stop (labelled ABS on the map) where all the commuters come and go, but it will be a normal road with other traffic going down it. Buses from the west will go western (up in the industrial area) > mall > ABS > eastern (Lake Gin College / Bowling Ally) where they will terminate, buses from the east will go eastern > ABS > mall > western and terminate there. So if you caught the bus from Dickson and worked at one of the card yards you wouldn’t have to slog from the interchange, same if you lived in Dunlop but were going to College.

Its not clear from both the ACTION and the ACTPLA pages, but it looks like you might need to traverse the three Belconnen bus stops to change busses. That is going to majorly suck.
Conversely if every Belconnen bus goes via each of these three stops its going to add serious delays to every bus into and out of Belconnen.

Surely the approach should be, build new interchange, decommision old interchange, let Westfield do what they want afterwards.

Looking at the map, someone should tell ACTPLA it’s the Labor club, not Labour. And seeing Margaret Timpson park got me thinking how much the families of people who have parks named after them would appreciate the scraggly dustbowls that they have become.

LlamaFrog said :

Its a mess around here at the moment, construction everywhere. And I thought that it was just to spend tax revenue before the end of the financial year, my mistake.

What happened to the idea of roundabouts? they used to define canberra and now we fix traffic with lights. sad.

I agree – a lot of the intersections that they are upgrading could easily be handled by roundabouts (which I am a big fan of), but perhaps the roundabouts would be too small for frequent bus use?

It’s surprising that the new intersection of Cohen St and Emu Bank is not going to have lights.

Its a mess around here at the moment, construction everywhere. And I thought that it was just to spend tax revenue before the end of the financial year, my mistake.

What happened to the idea of roundabouts? they used to define canberra and now we fix traffic with lights. sad.

Any idea what will happen to the old bus interchange site?

BTW the map above is slightly clearer here.

Why is it I also have no confidence?

That is some serious work they are planning on doing. And for what benefit? I cant really see much!!! And the mall expanding? Correct me if I am wrong, but isnt there quite a few shops that are empty as it is?

Why is it I have no feeling of confidence government’s ability to actually do it?

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