MOUNT Gambier City Council has foreshadowed a traffic count to assess flow and safety around the new shopping development in the central business district.
It follows a request from She’s Apples tabled at Monday night’s economic and environment committee meeting, to remove a car park space on Compton Street.
The request called on elected members to replace the space with a “No Stopping” zone to allow safe navigation of delivery trucks.
While elected members did not oppose the removal of the car park space, Cr Steven Perryman believed there was scope for a broader assessment of traffic in the area.
“There’s still significant changes to take place there and my observation from using that area is there is other ingresses and egresses where there are issues with lines of sight and tightness of getting in and out,” Cr Perryman said.
“Something that was always a bugbear of mine was the amount of pedestrian traffic between Coles, She’s Apples and Baker’s Delight where they used to be near James Street and I think in a few months time we are going to see the same thing taking place.”
Cr Sonya Mezinec agreed it would be beneficial to get some expert advice on whether other measures needed to be put in place to manage traffic.
“I think the suggestion is a really good one because that area is going to be a much busier area than it is now,” Cr Mezinec said.
“I think we remove that car park and then put in place this other study because I think it is certainly going to be required.”
Speaking to The Border Watch yesterday, council infrastructure general manager Nick Serle said the discussion around a long-term traffic management plan was welcomed.
“It’s great to see She’s Apples relocated, Aldi up and running and shortly Coles will be in operation and it does mean we have to look at the whole traffic engineering and pedestrian interaction here on Compton Street,” Mr Serle said.
“The evidence is here today with how busy it is currently and Coles has not even opened yet.”
Mr Serle indicated council had explored how the traffic is managed at the James Street site to implement better strategies in the new shopping precinct near Compton Street.
“There is definitely a larger number of car parks in this area than there is in the older location, so that means it should actually work better,” he said.
“It’s thriving in this area already and if you go into these new developments they are fantastic facilities and that’s why we need to make sure the parking and traffic management matches the quality of the developments that have occurred.”
