Community Demand Safer Roads

Newly formed community group, Beachmere Residents for Safer Roads, held a community meeting on Monday, 25 January to address ongoing resident concerns of hooning and speeding.

State Member for Pumicestone, Ali King and Councillor for Division 2, Mark Booth, attended the meeting and heard the concerns of the residents who attended.

Those local concerns centred around speeding, hooning and the need for pedestrian crossings.  Councillor Mark Booth advised that the Council was investigating traffic calming, and traffic management measures, in the village as well as trialling chicanes and pinch points in at least one location.

Ali King addressed the concerns relating to Beachmere Road with a description of the Community Consultation process due to commence in March or April.  Disappointingly, and at a cost of $800,000 the community planning phase will be an on line process with little or no personal interaction for the residents of Beachmere. 

Beachmere Road has been allocated $7m but, as Ali said, that will not fix Beachmere Road or even a quarter of it, but will allow a “pipeline process” where, as funds become available, they will be allocated to the next stage or required works.

Ali King then advised the meeting that the “old style” Police Beats were a “thing of the past” and were considered ineffective and not proven to contribute to community safety.

Instead, the Labor Government was going ahead with Mobile Police Beats and the Bribie Island / Beachmere area had been allocated one such unit in the upcoming rollout.

Mobile Police Beats are, Ali said, the “cutting edge” and allow a Police van to be stationed at an event, or criminal event, as a mobile response unit to allow the Police to be “seen”.

With funding only being allocated in the next Budget, it is anticipated that neither Bribie nor Beachmere will see such a Mobile Police Beat before the end of 2023.

From roads to crime to juvenile crime to disenfranchised youth, the Safer Roads Group, and the residents who did make the effort to attend, should be applauded.  It is now up to the elected officials to translate their “political speak” of saying what everyone wants to hear, to making the changes that everyone wants to see, and that are required to keep residents safe and happy in their own streets.