MP wants redesign of traffic lights near truckstop, saying current set-up is "a complete and utter disaster"
By Brad Gardner | June 5, 2012
A Queensland MP wants traffic lights near a popular Emerald truckstop redesigned, claiming the current set-up is causing significant traffic disruptions.
Vaughan Johnson, who holds the seat of Gregory in the state’s outback, has criticised the installation of traffic lights at an intersection near the Caltex truckstop on the Capricorn Highway.
He says the placement of two sets of lights near one another have not been adequately thought through and that road trains are particularly affected.
“The traffic lights in general are a complete and utter disaster, synchronised or not. Two sets of traffic lights so close together is ludicrous, and if a road train is stopped the time it takes to get through means that it is the only vehicle that gets through,” he says.
“Put a train into the mix—because it is right beside the railway—and you have a traffic jam of monumental proportions.”
He says exiting the truckstop, which displays a stop sign for vehicles leaving the site, is problematic.
“Unfortunately now because of the traffic on Codenwarra Road you have to pull forward past this stop sign to be able to exit onto the road as it is too busy. This of course creates a problem,” Johnson says.
“I call on the Department [of Transport and Main Roads] to immediately investigate and redesign the traffic lights at this facility.”
Johnson says vehicles coming from the small rural town of Springsure to Emerald can be stuck in traffic for a lengthy amount of time.
“If the lights are against you there and you have a train against you, you could be there for half an hour,” he says.
Johnson says traffic levels in and around the truckstop, which is adjacent to a shopping precinct, will increase once a mine west of Emerald is developed.
“This is a very dangerous intersection. I am terrified that mothers with their children who go there after school to do shopping or whatever will be mixing with heavy transport, in some cases type 1 road trains, B-doubles and other heavy configurations,” he says.
