Your typical weekday morning getting out of the Molonglo Valley. Photo: Ian Bushnell.
A new traffic study of the Cotter Road in North Weston might offer some short-term relief for Molonglo and Weston Creek residents battling peak-hour bottlenecks.
In the long term, planning is also underway on the proposed Molonglo Parkway-Drive Connector, a new arterial road that will run from Denman Prospect and the Molonglo Town Centre at John Gorton Drive through to the Tuggeranong Parkway in the east.
This will eventually ease some of the pressure on the Cotter Road, but it is not expected to be built until the 2030s.
The ACT Government has contracted consultant WSP to provide an options report on possible actions to alleviate the current problems on Cotter Road.
WSP will begin by obtaining an accurate, up-to-date picture of traffic flow numbers and queuing times through intersections, some of which will require manual data collection.
The four-month contract acknowledges that the base traffic model for North Weston and future models are out of date and they will need to be recalibrated before looking at intersection design, traffic signal operation and lane change behaviours.
WSP will need to update the models for AM and PM peaks, shoulder-peak and warm-up periods, as well as examine the phasing of traffic lights every 15 minutes.
According to the contract, it will provide options for the government that could include a fine-tuning of the traffic light sequencing and physical changes to intersections or the roadway.
WSP will need to assess the impacts of any proposed solutions on the landscape, cyclists, pedestrians and buses.
It will need to take into account other Molonglo Valley developments, including those along Cotter Road, such as the LDK retirement village, Amberfield.
WSP will also provide estimates of how much any work to smooth out the traffic flow will cost.
Molonglo Valley Community Forum convenor Ryan Hemsley said that with the start of the new school and parliamentary terms, peak-hour traffic along the Cotter Road, where there are four sets of lights, was again becoming logjammed.
Mr Hemsley said the contract would develop a range of short-term interventions to alleviate some of the problems arising from the development of Molonglo and the delays in completing the Molonglo River bridge.
He said it was not surprising that potentially widening the road was on the table.
“We know that the Cotter road along that corridor is intended to ultimately be three lanes each way, inclusive of a full-length busway connecting the various bus lanes to the intersection of Cotter Road and John Gorton Drive, Cotter and Streeton Drive and Cotter Road up towards North Weston,” he said.
Mr Hemsley said this issue wasn’t going away and the recent closure of Coppins Crossing Road during the bridge construction showed how bad things could get.
“And we’re not expected to see a completion of the Molonglo River bridge project until sometime in late 2026,” he said.
Mr Hemsley said if it were as simple as adjusting traffic light phasing, that could happen within a matter of months, but physical interventions were more of a medium-term proposition.
“What we want to do is make sure that whatever we’re doing is consistent with the long-term growth trajectory of the Molonglo Valley, that it considers traffic safety, traffic flow, and movement of both private and public transport vehicles,” he said.
Mr Hemsley said Molonglo residents would like the proposed connector road completed sooner rather than later, but the design work needed to be done first so that timeframes were realistic.
It will be split into two stages, with the first running from the intersection of Holborough Avenue and John Gorton Drive out to the edge of the Molonglo River.
Stage 2 will involve another bridge across the Molonglo River and an intersection with the Tuggeranong Parkway south of the Arboretum.
“We obviously don’t want to do half a job and leave the other half to a later date, and the traffic issues build up and cause havoc throughout the rest of the Molonglo Valley traffic network,” Mr Hemsley said.
“So that means we do need to look at it as a holistic project.”
