Gungahlin Drive holdups?

OMG, I had to drop my daughter at Belco one morning recently and nearly died when I experienced the traffic northsiders put up with getting to Barton. I ended up backtracking to Woden on the Parkway, and I reckon it was quicker than if I had got stuck in the carpark that was Parkes Way. And the stress!

Makes me appreciate Southside and my usual halfhour bus ride to work even more than usual.

arescarti42 said :

I don’t recall the Mitchell bound traffic backing up at all, but the city bound traffic was backing up for about 1km, so they may need to adjust the lights (or maybe they don’t, I’m not a traffic engineer).

When I was starting work in Mitchell at 9am. I would get caught with the right lane on Gungahlin Drive banking up. I would normally head up to the Well Station Drive lights as those two lanes were almost empty.
But while sitting at those lights & from my work, I see cars turning left from Well Station Drive onto Gungahlin Drive taking risks & forcing Gungahlin Drive traffic to come to a sudden stop.

chewy14 said :

rosscoact said :

I went through there this morning and it too five light changes to get through the intersection. For the last two changes I was close enough to see that a couple of cars would come from the south and want to turn into Sandford Street. This would trip the lights and the two cars would cross almost immediately while 500* were waiting to go south.

Easy fix, hold the cars turning into mitchell for longer, when the flow of traffic is in the opposite direction. Not rocket science.

* made up number, not sure how many cars could fit in two lanes for a kilometre or so.

I can tell you that the turners into Mitchell must have simply got lucky, because they’re usually waiting for a couple of minutes.
And there’s also usually a hundred metres or so of cars trying to turn into Mitchell. Changing the lights even more would simply back up traffic further and create another dangerous situation for North bound traffic. Easy fix is to suck it up because the lights are as good as they’re going to get.

Easiest fix is to go a different way

rosscoact said :

I went through there this morning and it too five light changes to get through the intersection. For the last two changes I was close enough to see that a couple of cars would come from the south and want to turn into Sandford Street. This would trip the lights and the two cars would cross almost immediately while 500* were waiting to go south.

Easy fix, hold the cars turning into mitchell for longer, when the flow of traffic is in the opposite direction. Not rocket science.

* made up number, not sure how many cars could fit in two lanes for a kilometre or so.

I can tell you that the turners into Mitchell must have simply got lucky, because they’re usually waiting for a couple of minutes.
And there’s also usually a hundred metres or so of cars trying to turn into Mitchell. Changing the lights even more would simply back up traffic further and create another dangerous situation for North bound traffic. Easy fix is to suck it up because the lights are as good as they’re going to get.

I went through there this morning and it too five light changes to get through the intersection. For the last two changes I was close enough to see that a couple of cars would come from the south and want to turn into Sandford Street. This would trip the lights and the two cars would cross almost immediately while 500* were waiting to go south.

Easy fix, hold the cars turning into mitchell for longer, when the flow of traffic is in the opposite direction. Not rocket science.

* made up number, not sure how many cars could fit in two lanes for a kilometre or so.

Mothy said :

MangaGal said :

Perhaps we all should consider car-pooling? It’ll reduce the amount of traffic.

Considering the car contained me on the way to work in Bruce, my two year old going to daycare in Belconnen, and my wife and 8 month old going to Physi-kids at Jamison, unless you know a contortionist heading from Amaroo to the Belconnen area that doesn’t mind squeezing in between two car seats, I think we’re shit out of luck on that count.

Am wondering whether there are people doing the rat run of Well Station/Hoskins/Sandford when they see the bank up….

Yep, i used to live in Palmerston, I would cut across Well Station, turn right into Hoskins, left down Lysaght right at Flemington, left across the back of EPIC, turn right at the intersection near the youth detention centre, then right at the federal highway. Then I have the left, right, right, left manouvere through Watson and come out on Phillip Ave at the lights near the Information Technology place. Then at the end of Phillip Ave, at the round about it gets backed up, so right into Downer off Phillip, left, left and right onto Antill then left into Dickson.

Glad I didn’t have to go further

Bosworth said :

Surely the cyclists are to blame somehow?

+1

Can I please make a suggestion…..pick up the phone, via CanberraConnect, and speak with the Roads ACT Team. They are a good bunch and are happy to hear your concerns.

I did this and they are somewhat restricted with the lights @ Sandford St. That is, how do you force people down to the next intersection at Wells Station Drive if they wish to get into Mitchell?

Ideally, they want the pedestrian crossing to be on the northern side of the intersection but civil engineering plans failed them (drainage). They can’t change it.

Agreed, roads in Gungahlin are hopeless and it’s only going to get worse with the increase in population.

MangaGal said :

Perhaps we all should consider car-pooling? It’ll reduce the amount of traffic.

Considering the car contained me on the way to work in Bruce, my two year old going to daycare in Belconnen, and my wife and 8 month old going to Physi-kids at Jamison, unless you know a contortionist heading from Amaroo to the Belconnen area that doesn’t mind squeezing in between two car seats, I think we’re shit out of luck on that count.

Am wondering whether there are people doing the rat run of Well Station/Hoskins/Sandford when they see the bank up….

Surely the cyclists are to blame somehow?

I use the Sandford St / Gungahlin Dr junction each day on my way to work.

I work in Mitchell, and come from the Barton Hwy. It usually takes 2 to 3 cycles of the signals to turn right as they don’t stay green long enough to clear the turn lanes there. The merge on Sandford St also creates a cross junction bottleneck as well.

I would prefer to use the Well Station Rd junction instead, but because parking is restricted on the southbound carriageway of Hoskins St, I would have to find a place to do a U-turn, so I can park on the unrestricted side of the street. The U-turn or a blocky, would mean I’d still contribute to traffic problems, as both require using the Sandford St & Hoskins St signals.

The roads in Gungahlin are still inadequate compared to other areas of the ACT and it seems no one in power is interested in making the flow work better. I think TAMS only like to intervene with traffic flow when they can make it as difficult as possible to get to work, such as using badly placed merging facilities, speed humps / cushions, and mis-timed / unsynchronised signals.

MangaGal said :

Perhaps we all should consider car-pooling? It’ll reduce the amount of traffic.

I do, it didn’t.

About 5 months ago I was commuting to Weston Creek on Friday mornings, and the lights at the Sandford street intersection were a bottleneck then.

I don’t recall the Mitchell bound traffic backing up at all, but the city bound traffic was backing up for about 1km, so they may need to adjust the lights (or maybe they don’t, I’m not a traffic engineer).

Perhaps we all should consider car-pooling? It’ll reduce the amount of traffic.

That’s the reason I stopped using the GDE in the morning. Traffic banks up turning into Mitchell at Sandford St, which causes short phasing of the lights going the other way and banks the traffic up past Well Station. It also entices the idiots of the world to to through the red light. I was going to Mitchell, I would use some common sense and turn at Well Station which has more capacity.

Another well planned intersection with no thought to future traffic levels when building it. They either need to lengthen the turning lane and double the lanes on Sandford st (removing the form 1 lane after the intersection) or add capacity on the GDE with a third lane from Well Station until the Barton Hwy. not holding my breath given they haven’t done anything useful in the area in years.

Les Lozenger said :

Mothy – if you’re talking about the very same thing that frustrates me, it seems to be the northbound traffic turning from Gungahlin Drive on to Sandford St. Those lights seem to hold up the city bound arterial flow for what seems like an eternity.

Probably just like they seem to hold the Mitchell bound traffic for an eternity.

The lights can only do so much.

Mothy – if you’re talking about the very same thing that frustrates me, it seems to be the northbound traffic turning from Gungahlin Drive on to Sandford St. Those lights seem to hold up the city bound arterial flow for what seems like an eternity.