For years, residents around Leura have been trying to get something done about a dangerous stretch of Railway Parade.
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The road – from the top of the mall west to the industrial area in Katoomba – is extremely narrow and increasingly busy and residents fear it will become even more so when the new Bunnings is built.
It has no footpath (apart from a very short strip of some half a dozen metres), forcing pedestrians on to the road. In some cases, they have to walk with their backs to oncoming traffic because there is no room at all to walk on the railway side.
A group of about 30 marched along the road earlier this month, hoping to convince the RMS and/or council to urgently imposed a 40 kmh zone.
Organiser Michael MacLaurin has been agitating for decades on the subject. He even unearthed a 2009 notice of motion from then Ward 1 councillor El Gibbs calling for a report on footpaths and lower speed limits.
It was adopted the following year, with council recommending that the (then) Roads and Traffic Authority be asked to make it 40 kmh, and agreeing to give “prioritisation” to a capital works program to build a footpath.
Current Ward 1 councillor Kerry Brown is going to try again at next Tuesday’s council meeting.
She said she had been walking, cycling and driving along Railway Parade west since 2000 and the amount of traffic and number of pedestrians had probably tripled since then.
“In the early 2000s when the industrial area was just a few blokes with rocks, the people using it were the taxis, the residents and me.
“Now many tradies and DIYers are going to the industrial area and other drivers are avoiding the Leura Mall gridlock. There are also more people living in the area and more tourists wandering along.”
She acknowledged efforts dating back to the 1990s, saying: “My council motion is groundhog day for the locals.”
Mr MacLaurin said there had been many near-misses on the road, with pedestrians having to jump for their lives, including at least one incident last year that required a trip to hospital.
The residents have urgently requested a limit of 40 kmh as a first step but are still agitating for a footpath as a longer-term solution.
Mr MacLaurin said a traffic count in 1993, showed that an average 338 vehicles used the road each day. In 2012, another count found 569 vehicles a day, an increase of almost 70 per cent in 20 years.
This year, residents have counted somewhere between 650 and 700 vehicles daily.