The railway crossing at Lindum station is a tricky one, as may people will know. It has also been a political football for quite a while, with various promises in the past to get it fixed (Campbell Newman promised to fix it when he was Lord Mayor, on one condition – his candidate was elected to the local seat; they weren’t so it didn’t get fixed).
Now Federal MP for Bonner Ross Vasta has spearheaded a bi-partisan approach (it has the support both of Councillor Peter Cumming and State MP Joan Pease) to getting the crossing fixed.
In the highly unlikely event that you’re not familiar with the Lindum rail crossing, it is – in our opinion – one of the more dangerous railway crossings we’ve come across. In order to continue ‘straight on’ from Sibley Road, you have to do a dogleg over the crossing. Although oncoming traffic from North Road should give way to traffic turning left on to Lindum Road, in practice cars often don’t, as they only see these cars at the last minute. To complicate matters, the boom gates come down pretty frequently at rush hour, causing a traffic buildup on Kianawah and Sibley Roads and making the problem even worse when the boomgates go up.
QR have recorded 32 near misses between trains and either cars or pedestrians on the crossing between 2013-2017, an average of over six a year.
Last month Ross Vasta handed a petition with more than 4,500 signatures to the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Infrastructure and Transport Michael McCormack asking for the crossing to be fixed. Let’s hope the petition gets some action before there is another near miss, or worse.
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