Toowoomba council to complete traffic works on Curzon Street, investigate alternatives to Margaret Street lights after marathon meeting

A two-hour council debate over Toowoomba’s newest set of traffic lights descended into jabs, snipes and “disparaging” comments, which left one elected official “quite disturbed”.

The new set of lights on Margaret St has caused a major stir within the council.

The future of Toowoomba’s newest set of traffic lights has split the council down the middle during a marathon meeting featuring snipes, jabs and exasperated expressions.

The council will press ahead with upgrades to Curzon Street in East Toowoomba to mitigate “unforeseen” side effects of the new Margaret and Mackenzie streets traffic signals, which were installed in February.

The $160,000 in works, which included new line markings and stop signs, were recommended in a traffic study that concluded the new lights had redirected vehicles from Mackenzie St to Curzon St.

The $1.7m lights, funded partially by the federal government’s Black Spot program, have been a point of controversy in the up-market suburb and many residents have called for their removal or shutdown.

Deputy mayor Rebecca Vonhoff’s motion at Tuesday’s ordinary meeting, which closely resembled what was passed at last week’s committee meeting, was only achieved after a two-hour debate that saw multiple other motions defeated, amended, foreshadowed and withdrawn.

At one point, councillor Melissa Taylor accused some of her colleagues of making “disparaging” comments under their breaths.

The direction of the session broke down to such a point that mayor Geoff McDonald called for an adjournment halfway through to help reset proceedings.

The crux of the debate centred on whether the lights should remain at all, with a number of councillors led by Gary Gardner and Melissa Taylor arguing the entire intersection should be reviewed as soon as possible.

Councillor Gary Gardner questioned the traffic lights’ purpose. Picture: Kevin Farmer

After the committee motion was defeated 5-6, Mr Gardner put up a motion to not proceed with any upgrades to Curzon but instead get infrastructure general manager Mike Brady to assemble every report and study relating to the Black Spot application.

“We’re just going to be doing temporary measures for the next three years as we put stop signs up,” he said.

“We need to take a look at why this was done in the first place.”

This prompted a swift rebuke from councillor Carol Taylor, who believed elected officials were professing to know more about the issue than traffic engineers.

“I hark back to councillors – we’re not professionals, our road safety strategy has operations for black spots embedded in it,” she said.

“I’m quite disturbed by the things we’re mentioning here — we’ve got professional engineers here and yet we’re second-guessing them.”

Mayor Geoff McDonald. Picture: Kevin Farmer

Mr McDonald also became frustrated by the exchanges, especially after Mr Gardner later appeared to argue for something different from his motion.

“I just don’t want to create another Curzon Street, we’re going to be chasing our tail if we put stop signs in — I’d like to see an overall fix that is not band-aids,” Mr Gardner said.

“You’re talking about a more broad study of the East Toowoomba area? What you’ve explained to me is quite different to (your current motion) – it’s quite different,” Mr McDonald replied.

Mr McDonald adjourned the meeting, warning councillors to give clear direction to the organisation’s operational arm or risk “actually turning us back in circles”.

Upon resumption, Melissa Taylor put forward her own new motion that resembled Mr Gardner’s and actually proceeded with questioning over whether the lights could be turned off entirely.

Mr Brady said he could develop options around that, while noting any changes would need to be signed off by both the state and federal government given the external funding provided.

This is when Ms Vonhoff suggested a new alternative motion, which married up the Curzon Street mitigation works with Mr Gardner and Melissa Taylor’s desire to re-examine the intersection and explore alternatives.

Melissa Taylor immediately withdrew her motion to support the deputy mayor, prompting an incredulous response from Tim McMahon that spiralled into an argument.

“We’ve been going for several hours here, a second ago we weren’t supporting the implementation of the mitigation measures and now we’ve completely changed and we want to support them?” he said to Melissa Taylor.

“There are things that I’m not 100 per cent (happy with), I think we’re throwing good money after bad, but to actually affect change, I’m happy to support Rebecca Vonhoff on this,” Melissa Taylor replied tersely.

The motion passed 10-1, with Carol Taylor the only dissenting vote.