34 Elm St - Traffic Assessment - Rev C

34 Elm St, Cooroy


 3.1 Diamond Lane / Elm St / Wessel Petroleum / Cooroy Motel Intersection
The Wessel Petroleum and Cooroy Motel access to Diamond Lane is located approximately 8m
from the Elm St intersection. It is also located approximately 25m from the location where the slip
lane from Diamond St joins Elm St. The location and alignment of these intersections are not
compliant with current standards.
The proposed development would remove the Cooroy Motel access onto Elm St and Diamond
Lane. Removing the access to Elm St is in line with the requirement to limit direct access to major
roads. Relocating the access to Diamond Lane to a location further away from the Elm St
intersection will improve the safety of the Diamond Lane / Elm St intersection. Furthermore, the
proposed development will reduce the volume of traffic directed towards the non-compliant
Diamond Lane / Elm St / Wessel Petroleum access.

 3.2 Traffic Impacts to Diamond Lane
Currently, some the traffic generated by the Cooroy Motel contributes to the number of vehicles
accessing Diamond Lane. The Guide to Traffic Generating Developments by the Road and Traffic
Authority (RTA) was used to estimate the volume of traffic generated by the Cooroy Motel. Based
on the assumption of 25 units, with 85% occupancy and a caretaker’s residence, it is estimated
that the Cooroy Motel currently contributes approximately 73 vehicle trips per day. It is expected
that approximately 50% of these trips will utilise Diamond Lane resulting in approximately 36
vehicles per day.
The proposed development will limit the access to Diamond Lane to the commercial vehicles that
service the shopping centre. This will be achieved via a boom gate arrangement which will be
installed at the exit. Commercial vehicles will park in the loading bay and deliver the goods or
services to the shopping centre. Each shop will have an automated button to temporarily open
the boom gate to allow the commercial vehicle to exit.
The Department of Transport and Main Roads – Guide to Traffic Impact Assessment Section 8.2.1
provides a preferred hierarchy of data sources for traffic generation rates. The best source is a
traffic generation survey of an existing development similar to the proposed development in
terms of its land use, scale, location etc. The second best source is via the traffic generation data –
2006-18 (Queensland) Open Data. There are 5 other sources of acceptable data.
This information can be obtained from https://data.qld.gov.au/dataset/traffic-generation-data-
2006-2018.
Many sites in this data set separate the types of vehicles that access the site into Class 1, Class 2,
Class 3 and Class 4 – 13. Commercial vehicles are expected to be contained within the Class 3 or
Class 4-13 category.
The traffic generation data – 2006- 2018 (Queensland) Open Data has 49 shopping centre sites
that have been surveyed. These shopping centres range in size from 5,000m 2 to 150,733m2 GLFA.
The site that has been selected for comparison purposes with the Opal St development is a
6,074m2 GLFA located in Eli Waters on the Fraser Coast that was surveyed in 2018. This site is
identified as site 2018SC9. This site was selected due to its size, non-metropolitan location and
recency of survey. Shopping centres with a smaller GLFA were surveyed in 2007 however due to


360 Civil Consulting - Traffic Assessment                                              Page 9 of 13