Yarralumla residents have rejected the planned widening of Dudley Street with a new roundabout as a likely waste of taxpayer money, saying it diverts attention from much more urgent road problems in the suburb.
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The residents' association said a more urgent job was to fix the intersection of Novar and Dudley streets, and to build the long-awaited Mint interchange.
The interchange had to be built before light rail stage two, and once it was built the new Dudley Street upgrade would become obsolete, association spokesman David Harvey said.
"The real issue is that, to manage the new heavier traffic from Molonglo and the brickworks development, we need a Mint interchange," Mr Harvey said. "If the Mint interchange is fast tracked, we won’t need a Dudley Street upgrade."
The major bottleneck was at the corner of Novar and Duley streets - and the upgrade could even make that worse, he said.
"The dangerous issue is the congested roundabout at Dudley Street and Novar Street. The proposed Dudley Street upgrade does nothing to solve this."
As reported last week, the ACT government wants to push through approvals for a new access road to the planned Canberra Brickworks housing estate without having to do a full environment impact assessment.
Doma Group, which won the right to develop the Yarralumla Brickworks last year, will build about 380 new homes at the historic brickworks with access off Adelaide Avenue, via Dudley Street, then across what is now open space.
The ACT government is now planning to widen Dudley Street from six metres to 10, and build a new road off Dudley Street to connect to the brickworks.
The proposal said the new housing precinct would generate an extra 2400 car movements a day on Dudley Street, on top of the 7500 vehicles using the road each day now. The wider road would cater for for 9000 vehicles a day.
The site is home to the critically endangered golden sun moth and some nationally significant patches of natural temperate grassland.
The government's application says the site contains some nationally significant grasslands and 7.4 hectares of habitat for the critically endangered golden sun moth, of which 3.17 hectares would be impacted.
But the Yarralumla residents group said the 5.58 hectare project area seemed "excessive" for an access road. The 150-metre diameter for the proposed roundabout was not necessary and a signalised T-intersection would suffice and had a smaller footprint, Mr Harvey said.
He said the environmental impact could be mitigate by eliminating or downsizing the Dudley Street upgrade.
"With this upgrade, we lose two critically endangered species," he said. "The idea is to spend money on the North Mitchell grasslands as an alternative habitat – but the North Mitchell grasslands is contaminated, and has a poor history of managing the golden sun moth and natural temperate grasslands, so this is hardly conservation."
If approved, construction of the upgrade is expected to begin this year and will open before the brickworks precinct is built.
