I am excited to announce there has been a major win in the fight to improve road safety around Maroochydore State High with a $1.8m upgrade announced for the school’s bus set down.
The current design is a “nightmare” which risks the lives of students and teachers. I welcome the funding for the first stage of the bus-bay upgrade – it is a win for common sense and safety and comes after a lot of advocacy. It’s been a pleasure to work with the school community.
The current bus bays are dangerous as they require buses to reverse park, resulting in teachers needing to be traffic controllers to keep students safe. That isn’t fair to teachers or students.
This upgrade will allow buses to parallel park and not reverse, which is much safer.
School knock-off is a busy time with buses, cars, pedestrians and all sorts of wheeled devices. Added to that, buses were having to reverse park as the existing bus bays were badly designed and needed a safety overhaul.
There are about 1200 students at Maroochydore High with hundreds who come by buses from the surrounding area.
I have raised this issue in Parliament and directly with the Transport and Education Minister as I advocated for the upgrade.
A considerable amount of design work has already been done, and I understand that the timing for construction will be within the next two financial years.
More work will be required to finish off the school’s ramp down into the carpark and other pedestrian walkways and I will continue to advocate for this to be included.
More exciting announcements to come…..
