Entries Tagged 'road safety' ↓

On Monday 14th, local residents Rob vincent, Chris Harries and myself attended a special meeting of the City Services Committee at the Town Hall. We each spoke for a few minutes to the alderman regarding our request for traffic calming in Waterworks Rd. Two residents from Ridgeway community and one Waterworks resident spoke against the proposal.

After some debate by the aldermen, the end result is:
- speed humps will be temporarily installed along the section of Waterworks Road from the reserve to Romilly Street for a six month trial period
- council will do a speed survey of the street prior to installation and at some stage afterwards to measure the effectiveness of the speed humps
- no plans were made to extend the installation of speed humps below Romilly street at this meeting, although these are still on the drawing board.

Only one alderman voted against the amended proposal.

It seemed the aldermen were persuaded by the large response to their surveys and most importantly because there was such strong community support for traffic calming.

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In the last month or so we have seen a large number of dead animals on the road. We have tried to keep a record because of our own interest in the wildlife of the valley and to raise awareness of another of the dangers from driving too fast along Waterworks Road. We are fairly certain that the wallaby numbers (5 in one month) are much higher than normal because of the dry conditions.

The wallabies hide on the upper slopes of Tolman’s Hill in the daytime and at night cross the road to drink in the creek and get access to the green grass near the creek. We would estimate that there were (before the last killing spree) between 15 and 30 wallabies which come down from Tolman’s Hill every night. The bettongs seem to do the same although they are much less common.

We are keen to keep an informal tally of the road kill as a way of monitoring the wildlife population in the valley.The data would also be interesting if we ever get speed humps or other speed reduction devices in the valley.If anyone sees dead animals along the road we would appreciate an email: Simply email Sebastian or Ruth

Hobart council organised a meeting last week to discuss the traffic calming measures planned for Waterworks Rd. About a dozen Ridgeway residents and two members of the Waterworks Valley community (Steph and Trish) attended; Ald Ron Christie chaired the meeting and Deputy Mayor Eva Ruzika and Ald Elise Archer were also present, as well as Leon Parker, from Hobart Council’s Road Services. 

We attended  mainly to reassure Ridgeway residents that Waterworks Community was not trying to create and ‘us-vs-them’ situation, and that we weren’t blaming the problems we experience with the road on Ridgeway residents. We also wanted to make it clear that our request for traffic calming was driven by concern for the safety of all road users including, of course, those from Ridgeway. Continue reading →

Ours is a winding road, often steep, with only one formed footpath for much of its length.

The parents and children of the Walking Bus travel down the southern side on this footpath, but of course the families involved are from both sides of the road and children and adults cross it to play or visit, too.

Adults and older children cycle, walk, walk their dogs and run here; wallabies and other native animals cross at night or early in the morning. All too often they don’t make it safely to the other side, as Waterworks Road attracts speedsters.

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