Slow Streets

Indooroopilly Rd and Heroes Av

The section of Indooroopilly Rd and Heroes Avenue between Burns Road and Gailey Rd is currently sign posted as 60km/h. It is considered a district road.

It is used for traffic passing to / from Burns and Moggill Roads from Gailey Rd. In general this is traffic from St Lucia and the University which feeds north and west. It is a dangerous stretch of road for pedestrians containing several corners that drivers often treat as a race course. It separates two parks that are frequented by children and it divides a major active transport route on the Principal Cycle Network.

Concerns

Residents have concerns including:

• The volume, speed and noise of traffic and the vehicle pollution from traffic along this road;
• safety for children crossing the road, especially for access to, and between, Perrin and Jack Cook Parks;
• the recent increase in the volume of construction traffic using this road;
• the inconsistency with the speed limit on Whitmore Road and Alpha Street. These streets are both signed as 50km/h and are similarly considered district roads forming part of the same connection between Moggill Road and Gailey Road;
• the inconsistency with other connecting roads that have traffic calming with speed platforms. Arrol Street in Camp Hill, for example, connects Stanley Road with Old Cleveland Road. It has four speed platforms. Greogory Street in Auchenflower connects Milton Road with Birdwood Terrace and also has at least one speed platform;
• speed has often lead to collisions between moving and parked cars;

Solutions

I suggest the following changes to the section of road in order to make it safer for all road users in the area:

• reduce the speed limit to at least 50 km/h;
• narrowing the lanes;
• adding a wombat pedestrian crossing near where the current pedestrian island is located;
• creating a dedicated active transport crossing alongside this pedestrian crossing into the other section of Indooroopilly Rd;
• removing the pedestrian island, instead creating a bump out from the Jack Cook Park side;
• sharpening the entrance from the roundabout with line marking and physical barrier to a designated car parking area;
• sharpening the bend/corner with better line marking;
• replacing the ramped gutters with standard gutters (to stop cars parking on the footpath);

Reducing the speed will bring it in line with all the other similar streets in the area. Major routes like Swann Rd, Hawken Dr, connections along Alpha St and Whitmore St and the rest of Indooroopilly Rd are already at a lower speed (50km/h). This section of road seems an anomaly.

Narrow lanes are particularly important as this normally is one of the best ways to discourage speed. Currently the road configuration places the lane directly in the middle of the road making the widest possible lanes which encourages speed (cars will often dangerously cut the corner giving them a wide berth to maintain high speed through the corners). Additionally narrowing the lanes will potentially provide more space for parking which should discourage people from parking on the footpath on the park side (currently a common occurrence). I believe some physical barriers should be placed here to enforce the lane size and parking bays.

The current crossing is very dangerous. Cars come around a reduced visibility corner along Indooroopilly Rd and down a hill from Heroes Av. Slowing the traffic here by introducing a wombat crossing is very important particularly for the safety of the children who regularly cross here. This will have the additional effect of reducing car speed along Heroes Av and into the blind corner along Indooroopilly Rd. With narrower lanes we could also improve the crossing entrance from Jack Cook Park which is currently a very steep descent directly onto the road.

As part of this crossing it would be great to improve the Principal Cycle Network route up Indooroopilly Rd by creating a dedicated route from Perrin Park, across Heroes Av and up Indooroopilly Rd. This would help separate bicycle and scooter traffic from pedestrians crossing at this intersection which can get very busy at peak hours.

Narrowing the lanes on Heroes Av will give back some street real estate which could be used for a new active transport connection.