BBay CBD chaos or do they know what they are doing
- The Beagle
- Nov 16, 2017
- 2 min read
The Editor
Much discussion has been occurring at Council about the planned New Bridge for Batemans Bay. Apparently the matter has been discussed by the Council's “Audit” Committee with engineering staff in attendance. It is inevitable that the new bridge construction over the Clyde River will cause existing traffic arrangements to be altered dramatically. As a consequence the shire’s residents and ratepayers may be lumbered with some fairly immediate costs associated with rearranging traffic flows and perhaps even relocating the bus terminal in Batemans Bay as the process continues. If that does occur budget allocations will be required for ongoing maintenance and staff time to oversee it all. Of immediate concern is the reality that once the off ramp from the bridge into Clyde Street is disabled (as is their intention) heavy vehicles exiting the Bridge Plaza may will have no option but to travel along Clyde St and through the Orient St (pedestrian mall) as a right turn into North Street won't be possible without causing considerable traffic conflict. There is already a major problem developing in this area adjacent to the intersections of Clyde Street/ Orient Street and North Street in respect of the local and interstate buses and no future solution is on the table from what we hear as to whether the buses will eventually be directed to leave the CBD area via North Street or allowed to trundle through the "pedestrian friendly mall".
It certainly won't be a good look having semi trailers trundling through the mall as well.
Council and the mayor have long discussed moving the buses to the old Batemans Bay Bowling Club site when they sell off and relocate the community centre and information centre and move those as well but we all know that is a long way off. If the bus pick up area has to be relocated (which is inevitable) is it proposed to make provision for that in the next and coming budgets ? If a solution allowing for heavy delivery vehicles is found to allow them to turn left out of the delivery exit into Clyde and left again onto a service lane to connect with the new Princes Highway arrangements who will fund that new infrastructure work and future maintenance works because that option doesn't appear in the RMS designs?
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