2014-09-16 Planning & Organisation Committee Agenda

PLANNING & ORGANISATION COMMITTEE MEETING AGENDA                             16 September 2014




To address road safety, the applicant proposes to upgrade sections of Top Forestry Road.
The applicant’s engineer provides two options for improving the road, with both involving
localised widening (5.5m carriageway) and improvements to the critical bends. Neither
option includes sealing the road. Option 1 involves significant slope and embankment
stability works allowing a heavy vehicle and car to pass each other on the critical bend; and
Option 2 involves installing a one way system at the critical bend (see Attachment 5).

Council engaged a traffic engineer (Beard Traffic Engineering) to review the report. Council’s
consultant advises that Top Forestry Road cannot satisfactorily be used by the proposed
heavy vehicles without significant upgrading or some way to ensure compliance with a traffic
management plan, which effectively restricts usage of the road to only one heavy vehicle at
a time and with restricted operating speeds (probably not more than 30 km/hour). The
problem is that there is no real way to enforce compliance with such a traffic management
plan and Council’s traffic engineer discounts option 2 (involving the one way system) for this
reason.

The consultant also advises that any upgrading should take into account the proposal’s use
of relatively large vehicles (19m AVs), the critical bends and the relatively steep terrain.
Taking account of these factors, Council’s traffic engineer recommends that as part of the
development, upgrading should be carried out to Top Forestry Road with a basic
carriageway of 6m and 7m on the critical bends, fix the crossfalls, and installation of guide
posts and speed signage. These proposed safety upgrades are fairly similar to the
applicant’s first option, which proposes a 5.5m carriageway and 8m on the critical bends.

The Eastern Downs Regional Roads Group Configuration Standard from which the 6m
carriageway widths have been adopted, suggest that for traffic volumes over 100 vehicles
per day and/or has >20% heavy vehicle use, the road should be sealed. While the standard
adopted by the applicant’s consultant for a 5.5m carriageway is from the Unsealed Roads
Manual (Australian Roads Research Board), which requires an all-weather two-lane road
formed and gravelled, or single-lane sealed road with gravel shoulders.

The above standards only address the safety of the road and do not address the amenity
(dust) impacts and maintenance requirements.




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