What is happening
The City proposes to duplicate Garden Street from Warton Road to Harpenden Street and extend Garden Street from Harpenden Street to Holmes Street in Southern River with construction of 1480m of new road. A section of the new road includes noise walls to reduce the impact of current and future traffic.
Why the road is needed
The Garden Street extension is part of a long-term plan to connect Garden Street to Tonkin Highway that will alleviate predicted significant traffic congestion in the local road network.
The proposal reduces the need for vehicles to cut through local streets in the vicinity, providing potential to improve amenity in local streets for residents.
Alternatives considered
The City has considered 'do nothing', however due to the expected future traffic requirements of over 36,000 vehicles per day, this approach was not feasible.
Without the Garden Street extension, traffic modelling predicts major congestion and compromised road safety in district distribution roads such as Ranford Road, Nicholson Road and Corfield Street. These roads will exceed their capacity and require upgrading at a significant cost to the community including potential land take requirements.
Environmental Considerations
The City has now received approval from the Environmental Protection Authority for the project and will commence construction shortly. To minimise the environmental impact, the City worked closely with the State to minimise the road footprint and resultant impact as well as providing local quality bushland offsets. Please refer to the Revegetation and Post Development Management and Monitoring Plan and the Construction Environmental Management Plan.
The City has also received approval from the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, under sections 130(1) and 133 of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999. One of the conditions of this approval is the requirement to provide copies of the Revegetation Management Plan (part 1 and part 2), Revegetation and Post Development Management and Monitoring Plan and the Construction Environmental Management Plan on the City's website. Please refer to these plans in the Document Library.
