The ACT government has lodged an application to rezone seven sites on the light rail route to allow for new intersections, substations, a depot and road widening along the 12-kilometre tram line from Gungahlin.
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The surprise move on Friday afternoon comes before cabinet has made a final decision to go ahead with the project, a decision expected in the next month or two.
Documents lodged with the variation to the Territory Plan say traffic signals will be installed at up to nine intersections that do not have signals at the moment, with no unsignalled crossings of the tracks allowed. For speed and efficiency, curves and vehicle crossings of the track must be limited, it says.
Parking conditions along the route will be changed and a depot will be built in Mitchell adjacent to Flemington Road and Sandford Street, next to the National Archives building and the Crace nature reserve. A section of the nature reserve is to be rezoned to accommodate the depot.
Most of the land is already government-owned, but the plan lists other blocks, including the Yowani Country Club and golf course, where the government wants to acquire some land (not the recreation spaces, it says) to change access to the club, and allow a wider road, bigger intersection and a tram stop. A new four-way intersection will be built at Northbourne and Swinden, in Downer.
Exhibition Park will be affected, with land being eyed so the road can be widened, with changes to the intersection of Flemington Road and the Federal Highway, and a new four-way intersection at Flemington and Randwick roads, providing signalled access to Exhibition Park.
The rezoning affects land down either side of Flemington Road in this area.
Substations would be built on the Northbourne block containing Macarthur House, on Flemington Road and on blocks off Flemington Road – south of Collaroy Street and another south of Well Station Drive.
Documents with the Territory Plan variation include a preliminary study of noise for people living and working along the route.
It assumes 176 light rail movements during the day and 28 at night, with a tram speed of 70km/h. It assumes two-car trams, with a total length of 30 to 33 metres.
It says recommended noise goals would be achieved everywhere further than 24 metres from the centre of the track.
On tight rail curves "flanging noise" or "curve squeal" could occur, it says, recommending the design should minimise the possibility.
It says vibration would not present a risk to any buildings and no high-tech businesses susceptible to vibration operated along the route. Vibration was unlikely to disturb people in buildings further than 16 metres from the centre of the track, it says. It recommends noise mitigation for the electricity substations.
The document also include a study of environmental impacts, with 12 threatened species believed to live in the area, including a grasshopper, a moth and two lizard species, but it predicts few impacts on these or on grasslands. The Conservator of Flora and Fauna, though, notes that an immediately adjacent site tested in 2011 had one of the highest densities of vulnerable striped legless lizards recorded anywhere. The hope was that some could be translocated to a different area.