Last year ACTEA and the National Trail Coordinator put a lot of effort into the government consultation process relating to the duplication of William Hovell Drive from Drake Brockman Drive to Coppins Crossing Road. This duplication mostly impact the National Trail link from Drake Brockman through an underpass to Hawker and on to Cook paddocks. The works also provided an opportunity to make an additional link from The Pinnacles nature reserve through to Karma Reserve.
This consultation process is now finished and you can access the What We Heard Report on the Your Say website at https://hdp-au-prod-app-act-yoursay-files.s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/1316/4757/0480/William_Hovell_Drive_upgrade_-_WWH_report.pdf
ACTEA also received an individual response from the Transport Canberra and City Services Community Engagement Team.
The results of the consultation process are deeply disappointing to us. One of the stated goals of the upgrading process was
improving and enhancing the Bicentennial National Trail underpass and approaches to minimise conflict between users
The final result is a commitment to only
mitigate the conflicts on the Bicentennial National Trail and equestrian users in the design as much as possible.
Having to share a dual carriage way underpass with a commuter bike path is pretty much a failure. If the best the government can do is install signage it is clear they have given up on the initial goal altogether. It is not the experience of the ACT Equestrian community, in the numerous underpasses that we use around town, that cyclists pay the least attention to signage, especially if it inconveniences them. In effect the government is leaving equestrians to cope with a significantly increased safety risk as best they can.
The only bright spot is that there is still a DA process to go through.
