LETTER: Is the Charlesworth Bay traffic light the tip of the iceberg?

DEAR News Of The Area,

AT the moment, people living north of Coffs Harbour are quite lucky. We have had a bit of bypass construction to deal with, but it has all been done very professionally and has made our roads safer. We are lucky because we have a straight run into Park Beach with no lights or stoppages.

That will soon change with the addition of lights to the Charlesworth Bay intersection with the current highway.  According to an email that I received from the bypass team, Pacific Bay Resort requested the lights in 2019 and they were approved in 2020.The purpose is to make the intersection safer, which is a premise which is difficult to argue.

I would think that removing approximately 40 per cent of the traffic would have made the intersection safer already, particularly if the dedicated right-turn merging lane was kept.

People turning in from the south could surely use the Korora interchange, which is within sight, as the safest option.

Instead, we will have a light stopping the traffic for turns each way since they can not access the intersection at the same time.

I have been assured that the light will be designed to minimise impacts to through traffic, but we will stop.

This is progress, I guess .

My concerns are for the future impacts.

How long will it be until it is decided that if Pacific Bay needs a light, then the Big Banana surely needs two?

The construction alone would be a nightmare and the impact of driving north from Coffs would be a disaster.

A recent accident showed us all how quickly the city becomes a parking lot when the free flow of traffic north stops.

It will also be noisy with trucks having to brake/stop for the light all day and night. I feel badly for the residents of the caravan park who won’t benefit from the noise wall (or the intersection), which will be on the eastern part of the current highway.

If our current easy commute into town changes from five minutes into more, locals will also start using the back streets through Diggers Beach as a new “Hogbin Drive”, which will surely upset residents and may be a much greater safety concern over time.

Perhaps I am being a bit of a Chicken Little and the sky isn’t falling. I hope so; I would be very happy to be wrong and be sure that Transport for NSW has considered all of these issues within the greater road system and not just the wishes of one stakeholder.

Regards,

Denise Walsh,

Korora.