Housing plans raise traffic concerns

The Catholic Church wants to build a 57-lot residential housing estate on vacant land in Usher, raising fears from residents of traffic congestion.

The church will need to have a subdivision application approved by the State Government and a development application approved by Bunbury City Council before it can go ahead with the project at Lot 801 Parade Road.

The council has approved a local development plan which shows the church wants to use land bounded by Parade Road, Dudley Drive and Mosedale Avenue for the estate.

Four nearby residents filed objections to the housing development fearing the impact of more traffic.

The development will not connect to Parade Road but will instead use the smaller roads for access.

"I believe that traffic should be able to access Parade Road via the new area," resident Luke Warnock said in his submission to the council.

"Otherwise Crampton Avenue is going to be a 'bottleneck' type situation and is currently bad without extra numbers added in population."

Anna Dunning, who lives on Dudley Drive, said she had assumed the new subdivision would connect to Parade Road to reduce traffic on her street.

"I am disgusted that the council has already fenced off Parade Road and built a cycle path with the intention of not having any streets in the planned subdivision connecting to it," she said. "The only positive aspect of the new subdivision that I was expecting was for the amount of traffic to be reduced.

"There are small children residing on Dudley Drive and a playground on our street.

"We already have a problem with speeding and hooning."

In the report to councillors, planning staff have rejected concerns traffic in the area would get worse because of the development.

"It is considered that the additional traffic generated by the proposed development will be able to be adequately catered for by the existing road network," it states.

The local development plan will be published on the council's website and sent to the State Government.