The time has arrived for Clarence Valley Council and our traffic authorities to consider taking workable steps to ease the traffic crush and congestion that is currently being experienced on our roads and shopping area pavements.

This is the conclusion arrived at following an extensive survey carried out on behalf of the Clarence Valley Independent into one of the town’s biggest problems currently being suffered by its fast-growing population.

Since this newspaper highlighted this fast-developing situation some time ago, our editorial department has received many more concerned comments from locals that the town, during peak periods, has become one big traffic jam.

First of all, our informants point to the lack of wide and safe road refuge areas to cross the town’s one and only main artery on Yamba Road.

Elderly people and mothers with prams report that they experience great difficulty in finding breaks in the traffic down both sides of this road.

Their difficulties are generally to be found at high volume pedestrian traffic points. They claim, for instance, that the few pedestrian refuges provided down Yamba Road do not give them sufficient protection from being run into by passing vehicles.

A senior engineer with considerable road development and traffic regulatory experience has advised that each refuge created in Yamba should be accompanied by official pedestrian crossing signs. He believes that official pedestrian crossings and centre-of-the-road refuges should also be used to serve each official bus stop in all main thoroughfares such as Yamba Road and Treelands Drive serving the main shopping centre there.

Motorists leaving their Yamba Road properties by car and those trying to enter Yamba Road via Orion Drive and other similar street exits often have to wait for up to 10 or 15 minutes before finding a safe gap in the never- ending stream of cars and trucks travelling to and from Yamba Central.

Pedestrians, on the other hand, point to the number of adults riding bicycles on the Coldstream and Yamba Street pavements in spite of pavement signs prohibiting such activity. Only youngsters 16 years and under have the right to do this together with one shepherding parent.

Our street walkers and shoppers have been only too quick in recent times to also complain about speeding e-scooters being driven by teenagers and adults alike on what can be far too narrow pavements, considering the number of people using them.

The Clarence Valley Independent has also received comments that Yamba’s narrow CBD pedestrian pavements are being over cluttered by sales advertising boards. These fairly prolific signs can only be placed, by council edict, on an area one metre in width from the actual shopfront and not right in the middle of a busy pedestrian walkway which can only impede the flow of foot traffic.

Some drivers we have spoken to are also amazed at the number of cyclists freely riding our streets and roads without helmets as if that important law does not even exist.

For motorists, the implication of this “irresponsible behaviour” is that they may be complicit with a cyclist’s death or incapacitation from head wounds should an accident occur.

Similar fears are being expressed by Yamborians and surf-seeking tourists walking along the river path east from the marina. This walkway has become a favourite route for racing e-scooter riders, both young and old, who travel at speeds up to 25 kph, often weaving their way through dense groups of walkers.

Not only do these people threaten the peace of a morning’s walk but they do not carry any vehicle insurance cover should a pedestrian be injured, as has already happened to our knowledge.

As the organiser of the present newspaper traffic survey, the writer five years ago provided Clarence Valley Council with a list of about 80 points considered to be of considerable danger to motorists, cyclists and pedestrians alike.

A traffic officer from the Tweed was appointed to Council but most items on this historic ‘hotspot’ list have still to be attended to if professionally found to be dangerous to pedestrians.

While settling into the new job, the duly appointed officer accompanied the writer on a detailed examination of these ‘hotspots’ which are now still causing angst among some townspeople.

By saying this, this newspaper is not in any way imputing that any Council officer has failed in their duty. Instead, it is an indication of Yamba’s phenomenal population growth and subsequent increase in traffic flows.

Among the 80 suggestions put to Council at the start of the more recent pandemic were the removal of two parking spots on the corner of River and Coldstream Streets as large vehicles parked in these spots prevent children who cross the road from the skatepark cannot see traffic approaching them at speed from the Golf Club end of River Street. There have already been a couple of near misses at this point approaching the Coldstream roundabout.

Another problem area also revealed in our survey is the parking space outside the central Yamba Street supermarket where parked cars reversing into the street back onto pedestrians legitimately crossing the road on the adjacent official pedestrian crossing.

Our survey has also shown that vehicles exiting from the Yamba Street liquor store all too often cut across the middle-of-the-road double restriction sign and suddenly bear down on shoppers crossing the Yamba Road only a few metres away.

Another source of dangerous annoyance disclosed by our survey results is the number of oversized delivery trucks and articulated vehicles now making deliveries to some Yamba CBD businesses.

Instead of parking at the back of most shops in the central commercial area, they park in the main streets causing traffic to be often and seriously held-up.

The best areas for them to park while unloading their goods is either in Convent Lane or in Little High Street where there is less passing traffic.

Clarence Valley Council was asked several questions relating to a possible future second access into the town and responded…