RMS to monitor complaints on social media as part of plan to fix Frenchs Forest traffic woes
SENIOR planners for the Roads and Maritime Services have said they will monitor social media sites to come up with solutions to the Frenchs Forest traffic chaos.
Manly
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- HSC students fear exam delays due to road works
- Emergency meeting called to ease traffic in Frenchs Forest
- Frenchs Forest residents fear traffic chaos
SENIOR planners for the Roads and Maritime Services have said they will monitor social media sites to come up with solutions to the Frenchs Forest traffic chaos.
Northern Beaches Mayor Michael Regan said this could include changing the sequence of lights to improve traffic flow based on Facebook complaints.
Cr Regan’s view, on the Manly Daily’s Facebook page comes after an emergency meeting was called between the RMS and key stakeholders late Wednesday.
Furious residents have had more than an hour added to their commute after Naree and Frenchs Forest roads were made one-way as part of hospital roadworks.
After the urgent meeting, a briefing document sent to councillors showed 20,000 vehicles use Frenchs Forest Rd daily — the majority of which are now flooding nearby streets. It said RMS modelling showed a only 15-20 minute delay resulting from the changes.
Liberal Cr Rory Amon said:“This meeting shows the RMS’ disregard for locals is worse than we first thought,” he said. “The project planners literally decided overnight to remove 20,000 cars off Frenchs Forest Rd and hope for the best.
“This is incompetence at best and negligence at worst.”
Mr Regan wrote on Facebook after the meeting with the RMS and Wakehurst MP Brad Hazzard and Davidson MP Jonathan O’Dea urging people to: “Keep the feedback coming with exact times, durations and locations of the problems you are experiencing.
“RMS are going to monitor this (Facebook) site and other local groups to see how the changes they make impact on a day-to-day basis.
“So it’s important when you post to say ‘My normal round trip is x minutes and is now xyz’, or ‘Today I noticed my same trip to school took less than yesterday by x mins (sic)’,” he wrote.
Mr Hazzard, the NSW Health Minister and Wakehurst MP, called for the emergency meeting less than 48 hours after the road changes were put in place.
“They said there had been a number of contributing factors,” he said.
“There were failed automatic detector devices at three sets of traffic lights, which they said they were working on flat out and hoped to get fixed by the end of the week.”
Mr Hazzard said the RMS should communicate with stakeholders. Mr O’Dea said all parties would work to ensure impacts were limited.
“People understand there are longer-term benefits and some inconvenience is inevitable but, understandably, that should be minimalised, so a lot of heads are going towards urgently improving the situation.”
On Thursday Mr Regan said they had put forward a series of suggestions including lane widening and better light sequencing.
“The Transport Management Centre is continuing to monitor and adjust network traffic lights to help ease congestion in the area,” an RMS spokeswoman said.