TWO future bottlenecks at the Northern Distributor Road will be discussed on Tuesday night as Orange City Council seeks a solution.
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In a report to councillors, staff said traffic volumes were projected to rise at the William Maker Drive intersection of the NDR following construction of the link road from Telopea Way and also at the Hill Street intersection as North Orange continued to develop.
The report said the number of right turn movements would lead to longer queues and delays of 140-200 seconds during the afternoon peak, considered unacceptable.
Staff have recommended to develop detailed designs and costings to realign Hill Street back to its original alignment along Yellow Box Way.
The realignment would allow for a four-way roundabout intersection between Hill Street, the NDR and William Maker Drive and cut delays to an average of seven seconds.
The project would cost about $4 million.
Addressing possible criticism the council should have foreseen the traffic situation when the NDR was originally constructed and not realigned Hill Street, the report said modelling at the time justified the two current intersections.
“Local traffic flows have increased significantly over original projections,” the report said.
Four other proposals were canvassed including traffic lights at the four-way intersection rather than a roundabout, traffic lights at William Maker Drive and a roundabout at Hill Street, roundabouts at both intersections, and a realignment of William Maker Drive to align with a roundabout at Hill Street.
The double intersections, although half the cost, were eliminated to minimise disruption to the NDR’s through traffic, while the William Maker Drive realignment would require land acquisition.
William Maker Drive resident Phil Stevenson said the situation was already dangerous.
“People get frustrated waiting to turn right and there’s pretty high traffic on the distributor,” he said.
However, Environmentally Concerned Citizens of Orange president Nick King said the realignment would cut off a triangular parcel of community land from the Botanic Gardens.
ECCO objected to the Botanic Gardens masterplan, which earmarked the land for a potential conference centre.
“We want to see plans to have complementary development in connection with the ambience of the Botanic Gardens,” he said.
“It will be compromised, you can’t help that, but the impact should be minimised and they should be looking at pedestrian access in some way.”