It will be interesting to see when new roadworks planned for the Northern Distributor Road get the green light.
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Besides a proposal for a convention centre and hotel on land opposite Orange Botanic Gardens, lots of new footpaths, low screens and eucalypt planting and protection for properties and reserves are all on the drawing board.
Thankfully given the chop was a plan for two more sets of traffic lights on the NDR at Hill Street and 200 metres away at William Maker Drive. The lights would have included pedestrian crossings.
What happens at the crooked intersection of the NDR and The Escort Way is anybody's guess, but the council estimates work to cost $3.5 million.
There's already two sets of lights on the distributor just 700 metres from Hill Street at Woolworths and McDonald's, and drivers aren't particularly cock-a-hoop about them, so a couple more would have made people see red, so to speak.
Orange City Council now wants to realign Hill Street in front of the gardens to join the distributor at William Maker Drive, and then put in a large roundabout. The work has been estimated to cost $4.645 million.
The council also plans a roundabout at the intersection of Ploughman's Lane and Cargo Road, with the proposed distributor to cost $2.5 million, and that will be welcomed when it gets under way.
MAP: The current intersection of Hill Street and the Northern Distributor Road ...
What happens at the crooked intersection of the NDR and The Escort Way is anybody's guess, but the council estimates work to cost $3.5 million.
In keeping with our reputation as the roundabout capital of the world a new roundabout is going in at the intersection of Woodward Street and Wentworth Lane ($840,000), while others are planned for Hill Street and Matthews Avenue ($600,000), Moulder and Peisley streets ($900,000) and McLachlan and March streets.
They're probably a good thing, but drivers will need to learn how to signal leaving them and maybe then we could break the habit of closing our eyes and hoping for the best while going through one.
TIME IS STANDING STILL ONCE AGAIN
YOU certainly can't accuse Orange Post Office staff of being clock watchers. The Post Office clock's hands were stuck on five past 11 for four years before it was fixed, and people who work there either hadn't noticed or had put repairs in the too-hard basket.
But the old adage 'time stands still' certainly applies because it seems the poor old clock has given up the ghost yet again. The hands are stuck on 25 to nine, so the clock shows the correct time at least twice a day.
Once more we need an Orange tradie, electrician, mechanic or anyone who might have a long ladder to hop up and fix the bloody thing. Australia Post obviously doesn't seem worried.
PEDESTRIANS PLAYING CHICKEN ON ANSON STREET
THE latest bulletin on our Anson Street shemozzle is that nothing has changed and it's still as frustrating and totally congested as ever.
Brown's cows still wander one at a time back and forth over the pedestrian crossing in front of Woolworths without a single care in the world or a thought for the cars which regularly have to bank up as far back as the Kite Street roundabout and across Summer Street, which is dangerous.
For the 100th time: how hard would it be for people to take notice of the signs there and wait at the pedestrian crossing until there's at least several of them to walk across in a group?
Why won't people show some courtesy towards car drivers? It's not rocket science.
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