It is often taken for granted that residents of our suburbs can find peace and quiet in their homes. The residents of Elizabeth Hills surely imagined that would be the case when they bought in the area and began moving into their homes. Formerly farmland, Elizabeth Hills was subdivided from Cecil Hills and gazetted as a suburb in December 2009. Housing developments began in the area in 2014, with growth being so rapid that Elizabeth Hills was home to 3,208 people at the 2021 census. Some 10 years on from the beginning of growth in Elizabeth Hills, residents are subject to the daily rat run of motorists seeking to avoid traffic on Cowpasture Road.
Regentville Drive, a local collector road in Elizabeth Hills that is lined with family homes, has been described as the de facto third lane of Cowpasture Road. Furthermore, with the Len Waters Estate immediately to the south of Elizabeth Hills, residents are subject to a consistent barrage of industrial traffic. It is not a new phenomenon, and residents of the suburb have long raised the alarm on the need for traffic‑calming measures. A quick online search of "Elizabeth Hills traffic" will find a 2018 change.org petition calling for action, and frequent representations from frustrated residents resulted in the Liverpool Local Traffic Committee recommending that a local area traffic management study be commissioned in February 2023.
Liverpool City Council engaged a consultant to undertake an in-depth analysis focused on traffic management infrastructure in the Elizabeth Hills area. It found that Regentville Drive is carrying unacceptably high volumes of through traffic and that several intersections in Elizabeth Hills present unacceptable safety risks and require treatment. The release of such a report is long overdue and reinforces what residents have lived with over this time. When I doorknocked in Elizabeth Hills, road safety and traffic concerns were top of mind for almost every resident. Young families have banned their children from playing in their front yards to protect them from the speeding traffic they have come to expect. I have heard stories of the issues becoming so hard to bear that some residents have been forced to pack up and leave the suburb altogether.
The report only confirmed what residents of Elizabeth Hills have been telling council for years. The study recommended a set of targeted measures to reduce the impact of the issues, including partial road closures to divert southbound traffic away from Regentville Drive, the implementation of roundabout controls at critical junctions and speed humps, raised intersections and give-way treatments. The report suggested rolling the measures out in three stages. Stage one would involve a give-way treatment at the intersection of Newgate Boulevard, Antrim Drive and Corduroy Road, and partial road closures at the intersections of Wixstead Avenue with Newgate Boulevard, as well as Wixstead's intersection with Bentwing Avenue. Those road closures have the primary aim of diverting traffic away from Regentville Drive.
Stage two would involve the installation of several flat-top speed humps throughout the suburb, including on Dobroyd Drive, Rosebank Avenue and Clarence Drive. Finally, stage three would see the installation of a roundabout at the intersection of Duxford Street and Rosebank Avenue, as well as the raising of Rosebank's intersection with Gowanlea Avenue. The Liverpool Local Traffic Committee recommended that the local community be consulted regarding the recommendations of the study, which council agreed to at its October 2023 meeting.
Some 10 months on, there has been no progress on the plan. An initial round of community consultation was conducted in the early months of this year. As many residents were on holiday at the time, residents requested a second, more thorough round of community consultation, which concluded in May. All through this drawn‑out process, I have made numerous representations to council's traffic committee to try to progress action on the important issue and give residents some hope that there is a process. At its May meeting, council assured my office that the findings of community consultation would be presented to the next committee meeting and that it would finally move to staged implementation of the plan. However, by the July meeting council had still not collated resident feedback for the committee. When my office inquired about the number of submissions received, council was unable to provide an answer.
This is an urgent matter that has been repeatedly deferred by Liverpool council. With council soon to enter caretaker mode and with its elected body facing suspension, Elizabeth Hills residents now face the prospect of having to wait even longer for measures that should have been implemented years ago. Needless to say, this situation could have been avoided, but this council has forgotten its basic obligations to residents and ratepayers. It is more than happy to devote its time to shiny things, like a multimillion-dollar leisure precinct in already well‑serviced areas to the east of the local government area, while abdicating its very basic responsibilities to residents and ratepayers. Unfortunately, it is residents like those in Elizabeth Hills who suffer as a result.
