July 5, 2023
An exhaustive two-year public consultation process on the design of Wondai’s roundabout and the upgrade of lower Scott Street still has some way to run.
At Wednesday’s Infrastructure Standing Committee meeting, South Burnett councillors were shown the latest designs for an upgrade to the northern side of the town’s CBD.
Councillors were told the upgrade took more than a hundred public consultation submissions made over the past two years into consideration, along with feedback from local traders and the Wondai Business Group.
However some matters – in particular, a pedestrian crossing across Scott Street and the design of the strip’s footpaths – engaged Councillors’ attention.
Cr Kirstie Schumacher suggested that if the upgrade involved ripping up the existing footpaths and laying new ones, she thought Council should follow Kingaroy’s example and lay extra, empty cables alongside existing water, sewerage and power lines to allow easy future upgrades, such as NBN cabling or other cable-fed services that might be introduced.
Staff agreed, noting that a lot had been learned from recent work on the Kingaroy Transformation Project.
Cr Schumacher also questioned the longevity and maintenance requirements of yellow edging on the footpath designs, and Cr Duff suggested a red surface similar to that used in Proston’s CBD was possibly a more durable solution.
Cr Jane Erkens noted that most community feedback suggested residents were unlikely to walk to the bottom of Scott Street to use a pedestrian refuge shown in the designs.
She suggested a better solution might be to follow Nanango’s example and build the crossing mid-way along Scott Street opposite Cosy Dell Lane.
Discussion also focused on maximising parking spaces by reducing or eliminating garden beds near the Haly Street end of the strip.
In the end, Councillors asked staff to draw up revised plans by September.
These revised plans will then go out for a further, final round of public consultations before work on the roundabout and lower Scott Street begins later this year or early 2024.
Related articles:
- New Look Planned For Scott Street
- Roundabout Design Selected
- Have Your Say On Roundabout
- Council To Consult On Roundabout
