QUEANBEYAN residents will soon get their chance to scrutinise the traffic modelling underpinning the proposed Ellerton Drive Extension (EDE), some six years after the modelling was first commissioned.
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The crowd of angry residents who packed Council Chambers on Wednesday night demanded no less, regularly interjecting and heckling throughout what was one of the most tense and openly hostile Council meetings since last year's backdated rates saga.
Over 50 residents met out the front of the Crawford St Chambers prior to the meeting to protest the EDE, so many that when the meeting commenced they packed out the public gallery and spilled into the foyer, regularly shouting out for councillors to 'speak up.'
Jerrabomberra Residents Association (JRA) president Michael Ziebell was one of a number of residents who made presentations to Councillors on the EDE at the meeting. He was critical of the public consultation process on the road to date.
"I'd just like to say the EDE process has not worked with the community," Mr Ziebell said. "The consultations that have been offered have been just one-way, information sessions.
He said the JRA also took issue with the fact the public wasn't consulted at all when the Traffic Study was drawn up, with input coming only from traffic engineers, Council staff, and property developers.
"There has been not one change to the traffic study coming out of community consultation, not one. That's an absolute disgrace," he said.
After several other public submissions, councillors turned to the two motions before them calling for a public forum to be held on the EDE traffic modelling and strategy, one from Crs Jamie Cregan and Kenrick Winchester announced early last week, and a subsequent mayoral minute from mayor Tim Overall proposing the forum be held after the determination report on the EDE was finalised.
Councillors ultimately supported the motion from Crs Cregan and Winchester for a public forum on the issue to be held in April, with representatives on hand from the firm who prepared the town's de facto transport strategy, The Googong and Tralee Traffic Study (2031), New Zealand firm Gabites Porter. The forum will be held at the Bicentennial Hall with representatives from NSW Roads invited to attend, as well as the ecological survey team who prepared the environmental impact study for the road.
Cr Cregan said the forum would provide an opportunity for residents to go back to the beginning on why the Ellerton Drive was first proposed.
"There were a lot of residents who said [during the public consultation period] that they didn't provide any feedback on the Googong and Tralee Traffic Study, based on the name of it: they thought it was about Googong and Tralee," Cr Cregan said.
"This forum allows people to thoroughly and forensically get their answers from the people who conducted this study and be clearer for it."
Mayor Tim Overall said he agreed further consultation and a public forum was needed on the road but said he thought the determination report should come first, to "allow the community to have all the information before them."
However Cr Sue Whelan said she believed the forum should come first. "The major problem is that people don't feel they're being heard, and it goes back to process," she said. "This isn't correct process; listening to the community prior to the determination is."