Wednesday 4 January 2012

Talk to the community about City Place Queensland Transport

The opening of City Place to buses is a lethal danger to tourists and other pedestrians, the coordinator campaign to save City Place says.

Last Friday two Japanese women aged in their 20s were knocked to the ground on Lake Street by a Sunbus, with one woman suffering severe leg injuries and the other spinal injuries. One was trapped under the bus for some time. The windscreen of the bus had a significant dent presumably from the impact of the head of one of the women.

Machans Beach resident Geoff Holland is campaigning to retain pedestrian control over City Place says this is a timely and serious warning.

"Do not open City Place up to buses in what is claimed will be a 'shared space' between pedestrians and 'slow-moving' buses," he says.

The Woolshed and P J O'Brien's pubs successfully lobbied Queensland Transport to get rid of the plan to have cars turning left into Shields St in front of their respective premises because of the danger to their merry clientele.

"Why is the same criterion not being applied to City Place?" Geoff Holland asks. "Where the merry clientele wander across City Place between The Woolshed and P J O'Briens - two of three most popular venues for young backpackers in Cairns. These backpackers and other tourists are not familiar with traffic conditions here, and this proposal would create a very ambiguous and dangerous zone."

Geoff Holland says public comments suggest that Japanese tourists do not respect traffic lights.

"So are we going to run a crash course on crossing the road for each tourist landing at Cairns Airport, or are we going to minimise risks and make sensible planning decisions?" Holland says. "In this abominable plan to open City Place to buses by Queensland Transport, there will not even be a pedestrian crossing or traffic lights."

"The plan to open City Place to buses is unnecessary and has nothing to do with building a more efficient and user-friendly bus network in Cairns. It is about time decision-makers in Queensland Transport in Brisbane came to Cairns and talked with the community," Geoff Holland says.

"It is about time Councillors in Cairns stood up to pressure from State Government and admit that opening City Place to buses is a stupid idea."

4 comments:

nomooremike said...

Is there anything more pretentious than referring to oneself in the third person?

KitchenSlut said...

I sincerely apologise to all Cairnsblog readers for my flippant pretensions. I promise to discuss this personality disorder with my psychiatrist at my next appointment!

Danny Betros said...

Geoff
The sad fact is that City Place has been superseeded by the Esplanade. It is dead -RIP.It's not worth blaming anyone or going over old ground.The CBD revitialisation plan encompasses a lot of very positive changes that can't come soon enough for our City. City Place is just one part of it and while DOT insist that the buses must travel along Lake St then we must open up the Mall.
I think the plan is very workable and will remove the filth and congestion of the Lake St area between Spence and Shields.
We're not talking about a 4 lane highway here, it will be much safer than what we have at the moment.
Having much bigger and better green areas on Shields St between Abbott/Lake and Grafton/Lake is a win/win for everyone and for the CBD appearance.
The biggest drama we have now is that our preference was to have the bus stops on the nothern side of the current mall but DOT is again trying to tell us that it must go between Shields and Spence again. This has effectively killed retail in what was once the "Golden Block" and the whole area has become so ugly and uninviting. Because we have no real representatives for our CBD from either State or local, ( Desley has been helpful recently but is retiring and Alan Blake hasn't said a thing about the CBD in 5 yrs) DOT continue to want to lump us with their bad decisions that are always made by Brisbane based engineers who have no understanding of our CBD.
We MUST all get behind the campaign to get the CBD make over happening and not let it get into a delayed project like the CEP.
The whole plan is not perfect and I'm sure it will be modified as we go but we need to start.

KitchenSlut said...

Well said Danny!Completely agree!