June 7, 2021
South Burnett Regional Council will consult with the Wondai Business Group about a proposed redesign of Wondai’s Haly Street roundabout.
Cr Scott Henschen will attend a meeting of the group on Tuesday to present options for the roundabout and gather feedback.
The roundabout has been a problem in Wondai for many years.
B-Double drivers report they often find the circle too narrow, which can force them to mount the edge of the roundabout, damaging its surface.
The roundabout is also the site used for the town’s Christmas Tree, which has prompted concerns from some residents that children could step out into the road in an effort to reach it.
Cr Henschen said Council proposes to demolish the existing roundabout and build a concrete one in its place.
The new roundabout would have a low edge which would allow B-doubles to mount the roundabout curve if necessary without damaging the infrastructure.
He also believed the Christmas Tree problem could be solved by moving it to a site in Coronation Park near the Wondai Regional Art Gallery.
“We want to create a feature for Wondai but it will be up to the community to decide what form that feature takes,” Cr Henschen said.
The results of community consultations will be presented to a Council meeting in the near future.
Where is your logical thinking, dear Councillors? In Wondai you want to rebuild a roundabout that is apparently too difficult for big trucks to negotiate. But in Blackbutt you are planning another one of those? Aren’t you going to create the same problem in Blackbutt to be corrected at great expense a few years down the track?
“Logical thinking”? That seems to be a missing component since the amalgamation.
Wondai also seems to have a Christmas tree in an odd place! That sounds familiar also, What is really wrong? Maybe as the comment of one chap some time ago suggested, there are not enough councillors with enough diverse experience to really be councillors and mistakes need to be made so as the mistakes can be identified by the public and then rectified. (Makes for more employment, eh?)
Also makes for frustrated ratepayers, too!
Puzzled, I think the logic is that Wondai’s roundabout was built before B-doubles were allowed on highways (this happened in early 1990s, I seem to recall) so what was once a perfectly OK roundabout is now inadequate. Good on Council for finally addressing it.
As for Blackbutt, I understand the plan for a roundabout there is that it’s a “future project” that may – or may not – ever happen. But if it does, it would have to be approved by DTMR because it’s on a highway (the same will apply to any upgraded Wondai roundabout) so I think we can be pretty confident it would meet all modern standards and avoid the Wondai problem from the outset.