Submissions support war on car hoons

The City’s Traffic Committee has unanimously supported extending the late-night weekend road closures on the Woolloomooloo waterfront in a bid to reduce noise from “car hoons” travelling into Kings Cross.

Residents have overwhelmingly supported the closures.

But questions remain about a displacement effect, diverting much of the traffic along other residential streets.

Council contractors block traffic one way coming into Kings Cross between midnight and 4am on Friday and Saturday nights, excepting residents and public vehicles. But because Police are unable to provide permanent backup, some vehicles have run the roadblock and headed into Kings Cross anyway.

Council’s plan to stop this is to employ Police on a DIY basis. The cost of this was not detailed in Council Documents.

Proposed measures include:

• Moving the closures forward one hour to run from 11pm to 3am;
• Installing traffic calming treatments along Macleay Street
• Banning right-hand turns from Bayswater Road to Darlinghurst Road (west to north) on Friday and Saturday nights and;
• Installing two speed cushions on Macleay Street between Greenknowe Avenue and Wylde Street as an interim measure until the permanent treatments are installed.

However speeding cars were not the issue according to Council’s speed and traffic counts taken during March this year. No cars were detected exceeding the 50K speed limits except for Craigend Street – the on and off-ramps to William Street.

There was an initial increase in traffic in nearby residential streets during the closures, says the Traffic Committee’s report, but that had in turn been displaced to William Street which itself is densely populated with residents, leading to complaints.

Jo Holder from Darlinghurst Residents’ Action Group said: “Road closures are not an answer. Road closures just create a displacement effect onto the next available route. The solution to the noise problem and residents’ right to a night’s sleep, lies with the urgent need to review the compounding effect of Council’s Late Night Precincts.”

Traffic counts in Macleay Street before and after the closures show reductions in northbound traffic leaving Kings Cross and in south/inbound  traffic on Saturday night. Last August, before the closures, between midnight and 1am there were  450 cars heading out of the Cross and 312 heading in. In March 2010, during the closures, there were 365 outbound and 282 inbound.

by Michael Gormly