City of Newcastle plans to bring forward installation of traffic lights approved at a crash-prone Islington intersection, but advocates want immediate safety measures in the mean-time.
The Herald reported on Saturday that local father Tristram Baumber, whose son was hit by a car at the intersection of Chinchen and Clyde streets, was outraged that traffic signals approved for the busy junction almost four years ago still hadn't been installed.
Council had been waiting for Transport for NSW to green light the installation, which came through a day after a media inquiry from the Herald.
However council said after the approval that work wasn't expected to start until mid-next year.
Greens councillor John Mackenzie raised the issue in Tuesday's council meeting. He said the time it had taken to install the traffic lights had led to a traffic cone placed at the intersection being dressed up, given the nickname "Coney" and had birthdays celebrated by the community.
"When people are decorating and dressing up and celebrating the birthdays of a traffic cone you know there is a delay to the works that is completely unacceptable," he said.
He said the responsibility now fell to council to "implement that and see those traffic lights... installed".
City of Newcastle's director of infrastructure Joanne Rigby said now Transport had approved the plans, council was expected to put out a tender in the next week or so, and planned to start construction in the first quarter of 2023. Ms Rigby said they hoped to have the work complete by the end of the financial year.
However Mr Baumber said that was "still a very long time from now".
"That's over seven months of an unsafe intersection continuing to be a threat to the community every day," he said.
"The same conditions that caused Santiago's injury still stand to cause someone else's injury tomorrow.
"Until the work to install the traffic lights is complete, I believe measures must be put in place. Signage or traffic control must stop the intersection from being a daily danger to the members of our community."
Cr Mackenzie also asked in the meeting whether interim measures could be put in place at the intersection to improve safety.
"I'd encourage those to be pursued and to be looked at with some seriousness," he said.
"We know it's a black spot, we know there is risk and none of us, not a single one of us wants to find ourselves in a circumstance where there's an accident that we could have done more to prevent."
