VEHICLES including B-Doubles could elect to travel an extra eight kilometres from Beerwah by using Roys Rd to connect south to the Bruce Highway and avoid a new U-turn facility at a proposed Coles development, court documents show.
Lawyers for the Sunshine Coast Council and Village Marketplace recently lodged documents opposing a ‘minor amendment’ application by Coles that introduces a U-Turn facility to the west of the main development.
The facility would be necessitated by the closure of a right hand turn from the adjacent industrial site at Moroney Place onto Roys Rd. Coles is appealing a rejection by council for a supermarket, fuel depot and fast food site on the corner of Steve Irwin Way and Roys Rd.
The appeal has been underway for nearly two years with Coles proposing a number of changes to its original development application including most recently the introduction of a U-turn facility capable of moving vehicles up to the size of a B-Double.
Lawyers for the Council said the proposed change, without material responding to their concerns, would result in a substantially different development to the original proposal.
In response to the Council’s concerns, engineer, Brian Trevilyan, stated that vehicles that had previously used Steve Irwin Way, would instead turn left and travel along Roys Rd to the highway. “It is conservatively assumed that all vehicles (both small and large vehicles), previously turning right out of Moroney Place, would utilise the proposed U-turn facility and undertake the west-to-east U-turn movement (eg some intending to ultimately head southwards may instead continue westwards along Roys Road to get to the Bruce Highway, and many smaller vehicles may lawfully elect to simply execute the full U-turn on Roys Road at that location),” the report for Coles stated.
The engineer wrote that Coles was anticipating 4.5 per cent traffic growth each year (compounded), based on the development of industrial areas in the vicinity of the proposed development.
He said that his estimates indicated that the U-turn facility would “operate with satisfactory operating parameters in 2035 with the proposed master plan development from a capacity viewpoint”.
The engineers report for Coles said the U-turn facility was “simply resolving a pre-existing safety problem which would reasonably be required irrespective of the proposed development – accordingly such an amendment to designated B-double routes (if required) would be required in any event, and b. it is routine for ‘local access’ (which includes egress) to be permitted, so typically such permission of passage would be unlikely to be problematic.”