A Cessnock principal is up in arms after his school was left to deal with significant traffic problems, while the state road authority effectively threw its hands in the air and walked away – and who could blame him for being so frustrated?
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Darren Cox (pictured), the principal at St Philip’s Christian College – an independent school on the edge of the Hunter’s wine country – is smarting after Roads and Maritime Services acknowledged it was aware of increasing traffic issues in the area, but opted to let the school figure out its own solution.
“Inspections of the intersection at Wine Country Drive and Lomas Lane at Nulkaba indicate congestion during the morning and afternoon peaks are related to the operation of St Phillip’s Christian College,” came an RMS response to Fairfax Media’s questions this week.
“Roads and Maritime has suggested the school consider on-site management to help alleviate traffic congestion. This included staggered start and finish times and improvements to drop-off /pick up arrangements.”
Even development proposals that aren’t nearly as significant as schools have assessments about potential traffic impacts completed by the RMS because it’s much easier to stop a problem before it occurs.
St Philips has only been at its new site since 2012, so this process has been completed in recent years. But ultimately, someone gave the school the green light. Now that problems have arisen, it shouldn’t be up to the school to find the fix – after all, they weren’t the ones tasked with assessing the possible traffic impact.
For the RMS to now acknowledge there’s a problem but simply leave it to the school to solve is not acceptable. We are talking about an environment where hundreds of parents and children walk and drive every morning and afternoon.
That’s to say nothing of the fact that Wine Country Drive, one of the roads that borders the school, is a busy thoroughfare between Cessnock and the wine region.
Presumably the purpose of the often bemoaned slow-turning wheels of bureaucracy – particularly in the case of government agencies – is to get things right.
Clearly, the RMS didn’t get this right and accountability seems to be lacking. But responsibility shouldn’t be dumped on a school community that simply wants a safe environment.
