Bid to bust Station Road congestion

Design work is happening now on footpath, signage and kerb-ramp improvements along busy Station Road at Burpengary as Moreton Bay Regional Council works on a long-term plan to bust congestion in the area.

Councillor Mark Booth (Div 2) says $700,000 has been allocated to the work in the 2021/22 Council Budget and a further $200,000 to fund a traffic management study, which will determine future upgrades.

“I’ve lived here for 35 years in the Narangba/Burpengary area. I went to school at St Eugene’s. When I went there, there was 136 students. There’s now about 1300 students that go to that school,” he says.
“The state school at the same time, when I was at school, there were a couple of hundred students. There’s now about 900 students at that school. So, we’re talking about 2200 students in that traffic during school times for the parents to drop off. I’ve seen that increase over the years.

“This is an opportunity for me to fix a problem … I get people constantly complaining about Station Rd. It’s a massive issue, especially during the school peak times that’s when it’s at its worst. We want to try to fix that as much as we can because if it’s a problem now, I want to be proactive for what we’re planning in the future.”

What’s happening

“What we’ll use the $200,000 for, over the next 12 months, is to do traffic monitoring and research where the congestion is, what’s causing it, what the times are and then we’ll formulate our plan on what we need to do to address that situation,” Cr Booth says.

“That could be changing sequencing of traffic lights, different options for roundabouts and intersections or road widening in different places. It could also mean alternative routes. Nothing’s off the table. I’ve said to the guys, ‘there’s the money to do the study, bring every idea you can so we can plan for the future’.”

As for the future of the Station/Morayfield/Progress Rd and Arthur Drewett Drive roundabout, Cr Booth says the traffic study will cover the road from that roundabout to the Burpengary train station roundabout.

“If our guys say, ‘you need signals here’, that will trigger the conversation with the State Government to say, ‘this is what we’re doing here but for this to work we need you guys to come to the party’,” he says.

In the meantime, design work has started on footpath and other ‘active transport improvements’, which will be partly funded by $400,000 from the Federal Government’s Local Roads and Community Infrastructure program.

Cr Booth says Council has already looked at the sequencing of traffic lights along the stretch of road and tweaked the timing to shave off about seven minutes in the afternoons.

He says while it is vital council plans for future traffic needs, as Morayfield South and Caboolture West develop, there are changes that can be made in the short-term to ease pressure points now.

“It’s something I’ll work on this term and probably the next one because it will be quite extensive. I wanted to get it started now,” he says.

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