Kingdon Street Safety Concerns

A SAFETY study will be conducted by the Roads and Maritime Services at the intersection of Kingdon Street and Kelly Street near Coles.

A safety study to be undertaken at Kingdon Street

Anna Zycki, regional manager for RMS Hunter region, said the study was prompted for pedestrian safety.

“It’s actually about pedestrian safety and we are doing a study there because the location was highlighted to us as a risk for a high pedestrian traffic area, particularly school children crossing the road there,” said Ms Zycki.

“We have some funding this financial year to do some investigations,” she said.

“We’ll look at things like the number of vehicle movements, the number of pedestrians, the time of most activity, you first have to do a study like that to learn what the issues may be impacting on that location.

“We are looking at the safety study for that in conjunction with the amount of traffic that will be moved out of town because of the bypass,” Anna Zychi said.

Kingdon Street and Kelly Street intersection

Ms Zycki said until the better understand the issues at the location it is difficult to speculate about the solution.

“Probably the safest solution for lots of pedestrians in a location is pedestrian signals, however we wouldn’t do that if there are other options that are safe and don’t have the same disruptive qualities and the road conditions may not lend themselves to traffic signals,” she said.

“You can do things like island refuges there, reducing the lane width so there is pedestrian access coming on either side, an obvious one is a pedestrian crossing, warning signage, there are a whole range of other things we can do.

“Until we finish the safety investigation there, we won’t know what the right solution is,” Anna Zychi said.