This concept design reimagines Breese Street as a one-way, southbound street between Albion Street and Hope Street.
Converting Breese Street to a one-way street allows us to create wider footpaths and maximises the amount of space to be utilised for additional greenery, tree planting and other improvements to create a significantly better experience for people walking and driving.
This design directly responds to our community engagement, in which we received a large volume of feedback from our community suggesting a one-way street option, and incorporates many of the other suggestions made by our community to create a street that is greener, safer, and easier to navigate.
Need for external approvals
Of the 2 concept designs proposed for Breese Street, this concept is the more challenging to deliver.
In order to accommodate a one-way treatment on Breese Street, changes will likely need to be made to the intersection of Hope Street and Sydney Road. As Sydney Road is managed by the Department of Transport and Planning (DTP), and is a major tram route, any changes to Sydney Road will be subject to external approvals.
As we cannot control the timelines that these approvals can take, this design concept may take longer to deliver than Option 2.
If this design is the community’s preferred option, we will advocate to the State Government for these changes so that the project can be delivered.
Reducing the carriageway down to one lane and one direction allows for significantly more planting space and room for people walking and riding.
It also addresses the community feedback that directly requested this change, and more generally expressed frustration with parking and congestion in the area. 25 per cent of all survey respondants suggested a one-way street as a preferred solution for improving Breese Street.
A one-way street option allows us to make many improvements to the area while allowing more parking to be retained. These changes cannot be made while maintaining two-way flow of traffic.
Our second design option does maintain a two-way flow of traffic, however this requires car parking removal.
The southbound design will put no extra pressure on the Albion Street and Sydney Road intersection, an intersection that is already considered at capacity.
In contrast, by allowing right hand turns out of Hope Street, traffic flow through Breese Street will improve. Florence Street and William Street currently carry very low traffic numbers and can carry additional capacity of vehicles into the precinct.
Most of this design option would be delivered by Council.
However, for this one-way southbound option to work properly, the traffic movements at the intersection of Sydney Road and Hope Street will need to change to allow traffic to enter back into the road network. This would involve allowing right turns into Sydney Road from Hope Street, which is currently banned.
Due to the high traffic volume of Sydney Road, this change would not be possible without additional traffic controls.
As Sydney Road is under control of the Department of Transport and Planning (DTP), if this is the preferred option we will advocate to DTP to make this possible.
As part of this option, we are proposing changes to West Street. This is due to the proposed location of the new station entrance, and proximity to Bulleke-bek park.
During our community engagement period, we heard how important this park is to residents of the Breese Street Precinct, and the design seeks to expand the feeling of where the park ends into the street.
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