RFI - Attachment G - Traffic report - Stuart Holland

3.0 Proposed development

The proposed development involves substantial upgrades to playground facilities as shown in Figure 1,
together with the addition of additional parking areas highlighted in Figures 2 and 3, including 12 new
parking spaces on the western side of Maple Street (as well as a new zebra crossing of Maple Street),
22 new parking spaces opposite the existing community building spaces off Lower Mill Road, and 30 new
parking spaces adjacent to the western side of the creek off the eastern end of the existing community
building parking area (64 new spaces in total).

It is also proposed to reconfigure the existing staff parking area at the rear of the library to achieve more
parking spaces in that area.


4.0 Traffic impacts on the broader road network

It is widely accepted in traffic engineering impact assessments that if development generated traffic flows
are less than 5% of existing traffic flows, that impacts are considered insignificant and then do not require
further detailed assessment.

Any concern with traffic flow impacts associated with the proposed new parking facilities would be
centred on impacts at the Garnett St / Maple Street / Myall Street roundabout.

For the following combination of reasons, traffic flow impacts associated with the proposed park
improvement works would be less than 5% of existing peak hour traffic flows at the Garnett St / Maple
Street / Myall Street roundabout, such that impacts on the broader road network would be insignificant
and do not need to be considered further:

(i)         While the proposal is to provide an additional 64 parking spaces to service the park
            improvements, the turnover of parking spaces associated with playground users would be
            lower than for parking spaces associated with use of the existing Cooroy township which has in
            the order of 600-700 parking spaces.

(ii)        Some of the playground users would combine their trip to the playground with a trip to the
            Cooroy town centre area, so those shared trips would not create additional traffic loadings on
            the broader network.

(iii)       In addition to traffic flows introduced to the roundabout by the 600-700 existing town centre
            parking spaces, there is also additional through traffic using the roundabout to/from areas west
            along Garnett Street and Mary River Road and south along Maple Street.

(iv)        The road traffic peaks occur in the weekday 8-9am and 3-4pm periods. Playground generated
            traffic flows at those road traffic peak times would be expected to be relatively low, with the
            playground expected to be busiest on weekends and less busy on weekdays (and an
            weekdays being busier in the middle of the day than in the AM or PM road peaks).


5.0 Carparking provisions

Assessment of parking provisions required for the proposed playground upgrade is not straight forward
and involves a range of considerations as discussed hereunder:

(i)         While it is important to ensure that sufficient parking spaces are provided, it is equally important
            to ensure that overprovision of parking does not occur so that scarce Council resources are not
            wasted in the provision of carparking spaces that may not be regularly utilised.

(ii)        Times of peak parking demand for the varying uses in the local area are unlikely to coincide.
            However, it is difficult to adequately profile and assess existing baseline demands across a


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