Royal Adelaide Hospital Pedestrian Safety

Ms BEDFORD (Florey) (15:16): Thank you, sir, for that protection. My question is to the Minister for Transport and Infrastructure. Can the minister inform the house what planning was undertaken and what remedial work is being done now to improve safety and access for pedestrians using and/or visiting the new RAH, both in the immediate vicinity and on approach from all directions?

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN (Lee—Minister for Transport and Infrastructure, Minister for Housing and Urban Development) (15:17): I thank the member for Florey for that question. The issue of pedestrian safety around the new Royal Adelaide Hospital has been a concern since it opened because the facilities that have been provided for the hospital, as well as for some of the other facilities that have emerged over the past 18 months, in particular the new investments off the back of the hospital in the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute and the investments by both the University of Adelaide and the University of South Australia, are attracting more people to that precinct.

There has been a noticeable trend as those buildings have become functional, both the new Royal Adelaide Hospital and those university buildings, that people are often crossing the road at locations other than the pedestrian facilities that have been installed with them. Certainly, the Adelaide city council, which technically is responsible for this, has engaged the Department of Planning, Transport and Infrastructure to work out how we can provide and improve the pedestrian facilities down there.

If members cast their minds to the layout of that particular precinct, there is the intersection that was built and created for the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute, which is George Street. Farther to the west of that, heading towards the new Royal Adelaide Hospital, there is the tram stop. There is also a street between North Terrace and Hindley Street called Gray Street, which does not have a pedestrian crossing or a signalised intersection and is receiving a lot of foot traffic from the Hindley Street west precinct.

It has certainly been observed, as far as I am advised, that there are a large number of people throughout the course of the day who, either at Gray Street or in the relative proximity to Gray Street, are crossing North Terrace. That is in between the pedestrian crossings that are provided for both the tram stop outside the new Royal Adelaide Hospital as well as the crossing facilities at the intersection that has been created at George Street.

In light of that explanation about the current layout, what both the transport department and the Adelaide city council are working towards is improving the pedestrian crossing facilities, preferably signalised without necessarily installing a new set of traffic lights in a half of North Terrace that already has a large number of signalised intersections, whether it's for traffic movements or whether it's for pedestrian movements. In fact, I think, off the top of my head, there is something in the order of seven signalised intersections between West Terrace and King William Street.

I think both the transport department and also the officers within the Adelaide city council are loath to put in an eighth set of traffic lights which would further impede traffic flow in the western half of North Terrace. They are working on a solution. My most recent advice, which I must admit goes back two or three weeks now, was looking at trying to augment that intersection at George Street to see if that would provide enough of an attraction for those pedestrians to cross safely with the aid of lights.

You can install new pedestrian facilities of course, but if people aren't incentivised to use them, because they feel it takes them too far out of their direct path to get where they are going, then you have just left the site as unsafe as it was before those new facilities were put in. Although it is not quite resolved, the work is being done between the transport department and the Adelaide city council and that is the direction it's heading in.