LAKE Road from Savoy to the Hill Street entrance soon will become a 40km/h zone.
Traffic supervisor for the Mid North Coast Local Area Command Sergeant John Carrero confirmed the change with Port News yesterday.
It is a move to help stem the amount of minor accidents along the stretch of road.
While Sgt Carrero couldn’t say exactly when the change would occur, he was confident it would take place.
He said something had to be done considering the high volume of traffic, coupled with the infrastructure and the number of pedestrians in the area.
But he admitted it was a minor fix for a much bigger problem.
“The road networks around Port Macquarie are just outdated,” he said. “They’re not built to hold the amount of traffic that’s on them these days.
“You look around and the roads and everything are almost the same as 16 years ago, but the traffic has increased dramatically.
“People have to realise Port Macquarie is no longer a regional town.”
He said, apart from a complete upgrade of most of the roads, there was not a lot that could be done to help the situation.
Improved linemarking and further reductions to some areas’ speed limits were the only options, he said.
Another option that Sgt Carrero said would be of benefit, especially to the congested industrial area, was a bypass road that connected the Oxley Highway to Ocean Drive.
“That would really take a lot of stress off Lake Road,” he said. “But it all comes back to funding.”
Crossing options in Gordon Street should be looked at, he said.
“It’s not just crossings but it’s the traffic flow that needs to be addressed,” he said. “Traffic coming in and out of Dan Murphy’s creates a bad bottleneck.
“But there’s no easy fix, if you do something to fix one intersection the bottleneck and the problem can move to the next intersection and cause even more of a problem.”
