Margie Maccoll
A group of Cooroibah parents believe a CDC Queensland bus company decision to stop local school buses making reverse turns due to safety concerns has made the journey to school for almost 20 school children less safe and is a cost cutting measure.
CDC Queensland advise the changes in the Cooroibah area were to eliminate the need for buses to make reverse turns in local streets which are viewed as a safety issue.
For at least the past eight years the school bus has driven the two minute route of about 1.2km from McKinnon Drive down Silverwood Drive to collect primary and secondary school children from Silverwood and Illawarra drives attending various schools across Noosa.
Parent Matthias Morrison said each morning children boarded the bus at the end of the road before the drivers reverse into the dead end of Illawarra Drive and returned to the main road. In the afternoons drivers reverse first before dropping off the children. Parents said there had never been a safety concern or incident.
Matthias’ wife Rachael said with no consultation or communication with parents or schools CDC Queensland last December made the decision to cut the side street journey, forcing the children to catch their buses on McKinnon Drive in a 100km/hr zone.
Parents discovered the change in the first week of the school term and the situation has caused havoc for the parents who are now juggling work shifts to drive their children to and from the bus stop or children as young as seven years are walking the unpaved footpaths to the busy main road.
“Children now have to navigate a t-intersection in a 100km/hr zone where motorists are speeding to either turn in or out of Silverwood Drive and there is no safe pathway to the bus stop. Corners are cut and motorists speed onto Silverwood Drive,” Rachael said.
“Parents are driving their children up to the Mckinnon Drive t-section and dropping them off in this vicinity then having to reverse turn themselves onto traffic turning into Silverwood Drive from Mckinnon Drive. They are further using a private driveway to make these turns and creating safety concerns themselves because they now have to drop off their children. Some are bypassing this altogether and driving their children to school, ultimately creating even more school traffic in peak times.”
CDC Queensland advise reverse turns are a safety risk without someone to spot while the bus is being reversed, as is the process at their depots. On small residential streets, or even larger roads with higher speed limits, there is significant risk in performing this manoeuvre, not only for those on the bus, but also for any children who may be running late and rushing to try and catch the bus before it leaves. Following these changes for 2024, there are no longer any school bus routes in the Noosa area that include reverse turns.
School bus routes affected by this year’s changes include those at Carriage Way, Silverwood Drive, Yatama Place, Johns Landing and Amaroo Place, Cooroibah and Tronsons Road, Ringtail Creek.
The school bus service is a state government-provided service free to students in rural areas who live more than 5km from their nearest school.
On her Noosa 360 Facebook Noosa MP Sandy Bolton clarified the process for school bus changes, saying a bus company such as CDC is contracted by Translink for the provision of school transport, the bus company lodges any changes they wish to make for an existing route, or applications for new routes, for approval by Translink.
“Translink requires that any changes apply from the first day of the school year. While Translink have not instructed bus companies to remove reverse turns, they now do not approve new bus routes that contain reverse turns. CDC has made this decision to proactively address the safety concerns associated with reverse turns.
“As this has caused issues with parents being unaware of changes for the last two years, we have written to the Queensland Minister for Transport, seeking the ability for changes to bus routes to also occur later through the school year, allowing schools to communicate upcoming changes to parents and students.”
After visiting the site on Tuesday Sandy said she would investigate further and go back to the Department of Transport and Main Roads (TMR) to see what can be done to make it safer and to ameliorate parents concerns.
“I have to be realistic in what can be changed,” she said. “The bus company as part of risk assessment, not just here but across Australia, have made changes to address risks to safety.”
Issues can be looked at such the speed on McKinnon Drive, which has been raised previously and the connectivity of bikeways and pathways, with more children using bikes to get into school, she said.
