Don’t say we told you so!

Who would have thought the day this newspaper was distributed last month was the day I told the community in my column that I took Deputy Lord Mayor Nicholas Reece to observe the pedestrian and truck interactions at the site where five unfortunate pedestrians were taken down by a truck mounting the curb.

But in hindsight, it was an accident waiting to happen and I am surprised it hadn’t happened sooner.

Only the night prior to the accident, the Southbank Residents’ Association (SRA) had a scheduled committee meeting and we moved a motion to purchase a GoPro to place on the façade of the building looking down over that intersection.

We figured that if we can capture footage of the trucks and pedestrians to show how dangerous it really is, that it might encourage the authorities to do something.

We knew that once someone physically sees what happens on that intersection that they wouldn’t be able to ignore it and hopefully that would be enough motivation to evaluate the intersection and make some changes.

Well, we were too late with the GoPro. But there has now been so much footage obtained by television crews now that there is no doubt of the dangers this intersection poses.

My thoughts go out to the individuals and their families who were injured on that fateful evening. I understand there is one person still in hospital with some way still to go. It was absolutely horrific and shouldn’t have happened to anyone.

I was also taken aback that almost three weeks later there had been no changes whatsoever to the intersection. I couldn’t understand how it could take that long to put some simple measures in place, even signage to warn pedestrians to be careful. 

Fortunately, the media has taken a great interest in this sequence of events and is holding the government to account. I have been assured they will not be giving up on this issue until something is done. And done doesn’t mean a few cement blocks, footpath paint and signs as is there now. I couldn’t believe (actually I could believe) the “interim” measures only lasted one night before a truck took out the sign, cement block and planter box around the corner at around 6pm.

Thank goodness for lockdown or otherwise no doubt someone would almost certainly have been injured not from being hit by a truck trailer, but by a wayward cement block across the footpath.

In any case, this only reinforced our concerns about the safety of the intersection and it made the Department of Transport (DoT) revaluate its “solution”.

I note a new sign which advises cars to “give way to turning trucks” yet the lane the trucks are turning from in the sign is actually a through lane and not a turning lane.

I guess that might be an acknowledgement from the DoT that it realises many of the trucks are turning from the through lane instead of the left turning lane, essentially breaking the law with an illegal turn.

Does this mean The Department is condoning them breaking the law in the name of safety? The DoT advises us these current measures are “temporary” while they evaluate a more suitable longer-term solution.

Well, the only longer-term solution I can think of is to take the trucks off our dense residential streets and put them back into the tunnel. It’s a simple risk ratio.

It is now more dangerous sending trucks through Southbank than it would be to send them through the tunnel. There is certainly no reason for livestock vehicles to still be on our roads. The SRA will continue to advocate for changes to this intersection and also the Kavanagh and Power streets intersection as we are aware of the dangers there too.

We are approaching our AGM. If you would like to contribute to making our suburb a great place to live, then please consider joining our committee. Come along to our next committee meeting in July as an observer and see the issues we discuss and how we operate.

Alternatively, if you would like to support us by membership, then we would encourage that. We don’t have a voice without members and it’s only $10 per year •