Bert Van Manen (Forde, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's with great pleasure that I rise to speak about the latest round of black spot road funding announced in my electorate of Forde late last week. We all know the importance of road safety, and this announcement builds on a number of recent announcements by this federal government of additional funding for state and local governments for road upgrades and safety upgrades across the electorate of Forde. There are the upgrade of the Howard Creek crossing on Tamborine and Oxenford Road, the upgrade to Beaudesert-Beenleigh Road between Beenleigh and Beaudesert, with a number of sections along there, and also the upgrades to Beenleigh Redland Bay Road for safety provisions, new services, new guard rails and a range of safety improvements such as clearing vegetation from the side of the road to make visibility better. These black spot road funding announcements build on those safety initiatives already in place. These four intersections are increasingly busy and, as we know with the black spot road funding program, have a history of accidents.

The intersection of Mandew Street and Leda Drive at Shailer Park will see a $120,000 upgrade to the traffic signals to amend the flow of traffic, CCTV for traffic management and a signalised left-turn slip lane. I know, as I go through that intersection regularly, how busy it is and the near misses that occur because you don't have signalised turn lanes and people try to cut in quickly because they don't want to sit in the queue. I'm sure that is a problem right around this country in a range of areas. It's interesting to note that a lot of new main road designs are putting traffic signals on left-turn lanes to prevent those very issues. Chambers Flat Road, Pleasant View Road and Kenny Road at Chambers Flat will get $400,000 for an upgrade. The intersection of Clarke Road and Lindenthal Road at Park Ridge will get a $955,000 upgrade to signalise that intersection. We were speaking about this particular intersection yesterday and, with the big new industrial estate there and the truck traffic that will start to come out of there, as well as all the residential development in that area, that will make an enormous difference. The last one is the intersection of Chambers Flat Road and School Road at Park Ridge with a $1.1 million upgrade to that intersection for signalisation. That hopefully will be done in conjunction with the existing duplication road project on Chamber Flat Road as well as other work that's being done in that area. But these projects, along with many others across the electorate of Forde— (Time expired)