Speech by Councillor Seal Chong Wah

Council Chambers: Debate on Petition: Call for a Pedestrian Crossing to make Leicester St Safe Again

10th June 2024

I support this petition, and any petition that calls for pedestrian safety around Brisbane. While it’s outside of my Ward, this request for a pedestrian crossing in Leicester Street illustrates a lot of deep-rooted flaws with this Council administration.

Our city’s neighbourhoods should be safe and easy for everybody to walk around. With a school, some parks, a shopping centre, and major bus routes nearby, streets like Leicester Street should be easy to cross and stroll along. The more that people can walk around, the less cars on the street, the less pollution and congestion, the less noise, and so on.

But right now, in Coorparoo, just like most suburbs of Brisbane, the residents are fully aware of the dangerous streets that exist in their neighbourhood. These are the streets that you wouldn’t let your kids play near, because cars scream down them to avoid congested main roads. Streets like Leicester Street, in fact most of Brisbane is hard to walk around and dangerous for pedestrians, because this Council wouldn’t dare to slow down traffic to make pedestrians safe.

But Brisbane doesn’t have to be like this! 

Kerb extensions, speed humps, and other traffic-calming devices all make our streets safer. They change how vehicles move, and force drivers to slow down. 

Leicester Street is actually much better designed than most streets in this city, with some artificial curves near intersections to slow down drivers. Leicester Street has some good existing safety elements such as two speed humps and pedestrian refuges, but it’s missing the last important piece for pedestrian safety, the proposed pedestrian crossing. 

If you’re young and quick, then you could jaywalk across this street easily. However many of our streets also need pedestrian crossings. If you use a wheelchair or a walker, you are aged or just not so quick moving, then you can’t take your chances. If you’re walking your child in a pram, then you wouldn’t dream of trying. Leicester Street does need a new crossing on its southern end.

We know how to make our streets quiet and safe.This isn’t hidden knowledge. The residents who brought this petition forward know this, and I suspect that this Council has hundreds of requests just like this one, for crossings and calming-devices across this city. But this Council administration just isn't listening.

Whenever residents of a street get together to call for pedestrian crossings or traffic calming, there’s no available budget. But when a road can be widened or vehicles can drive faster, this Council is happy to oblige. Just one example is the wasteful and disruptive Moggill Road upgrade costing $230 million, which could fund hundreds of new crossings alone. These projects induce more demand, tempting more people to drive, creating the congestion that they were meant to bust, and then we’re back to square one.

But that’s a choice of this Council administration. This petition shows an alternative. We can put pedestrian safety first instead.