Hans Lovejoy
The Byron Shire is about to have its first traffic control signals installed.
Owing to ‘significant delays’ and ‘safety hazard with traffic queuing on the southbound slow lane of the highway’, Transport for NSW (TfNSW) have announced $750,000 for traffic lights.
Referred also as ‘metering’, the strategy aims to ‘manage traffic flow and reduce highway congestion during peak traffic periods for motorists travelling to Ewingsdale and Byron Bay’.
The two page project update available at www.rms.nsw.gov.au does not explain what public consultation occurred, or whether other options were considered to reach the decision. It does say, however, that ‘traffic modelling shows traffic control signals at this location will improve traffic flow from the Pacific Highway onto Ewingsdale Road’.
‘TfNSW is also working with Byron Shire Council to explore whole of transport solutions to the travel patterns in the Byron LGA’.
Changes to the Byron Bay Hospital roundabout were made in 2019, say RMS, ‘In an effort to reduce congestion along Ewingsdale Road’.
Inexplicably, RMS designed a one lane roundabout in front of the new Byron hospital, which has resulted in a bottleneck for traffic.
Tom Lane, who will soon hand over The Farm on Ewingsdale Road to new owners, told The Echo he had been in discussion with RMS over a numbers of years to sell some of the land to widen the road.
Widening the road
He said, ‘But we haven’t been presented a design, or been given info on how much land is required’.
He added that the impact on The Farm is unknown, as ‘infrastructure will have to be relocated’.
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