Residents of Ainslie joined the concern of other residents associations in the inner north about traffic in their suburb this week. They say it is getting as bad as on the western side of Northbourne Avenue. The traffic flow, particularly at peak hours, in residential streets on both sides of Northbourne Avenue has increased substantially in the past five years and is likely to continue climbing. The reason has been obvious. New suburbs have been built, notably Gungahlin, North Lyneham and West Belconnen without laying out reasonable road infrastructure to bear the traffic they would generate. The land has been sold for the newer suburbs, with profits going to the developers, without provision for the necessary public infrastructure outside those suburbs. (And incidentally, the town centre and other non-traffic infrastructure in Gungahlin have been similarly ignored.)
The result is a bunfight of competing interests. Residents of Gungahlin, quite reasonably, want to get to work in Civic, Woden and beyond. Residents of inner north, quite reasonably, do not want large volumes of through-traffic charging through their suburbs on roads that were never designed to take it. Residents of the fringe of Mount Ainslie and the green belt between inner north and Belconnen do not want freeways carved through the bushland to take the Gungahlin traffic. ACT rate-payers do not want to subsidise a light-rail system or some other economically irresponsible dream solution. People who respect the notion of Canberra as the national city do not want Northbourne Avenue … the present gateway to Canberra … to lose chunks of its median strip to turning lanes, bus lanes, train lanes, or extra lanes.
The nature of the difficulty can be seen through the contrast with the southside. Tuggeranong Parkway was built without much rancour through pine plantations and farmland. In the inner south, the road design is different from the inner north. In the inner south there are no roads, as in the north, that can carry large amounts of traffic in a more-or-less direct line from newer, outer suburbs to the centre.
The essential trouble is that cars are noisy, dangerous, polluting, but damnably convenient.
The ACT Government has begun a program of community consultation about traffic proposals in north Canberra. This is commendable, but often “”the community” is not knowledgeable and what might seem good on paper, is not successful in practice. Humps, roundabouts, chicanes and other devices can causes as much noise and nuisance as they prevent. And they are no substitute for the more substantial spending on arterial roads.
That said, we do not that the noise and danger of traffic increases exponentially with speed and Australia has one of the highest suburban speed limits in the world. It should be cut to 50km/h and the police given the wherewithal to enforce it.
Further, whatever the case against the Monash and Dedman trafficways, there is a good case for a closer look at the National Capital Planning Authority’s Majura Parkway (from the Federal Highway around the back of Mount Ainslie to the Constitution-Kings point of the triangle) which would at once relieve some of Northbourne’s burden and give a grander entrance to the city.