Ballumbir, err Cooyong…no wait, Barry…or Coranderrk…oh I give up!

Ballumbir Street and Cooyong Street in Civic have been merged into one big street called Cooyong Street. Apparently this is an effort to eliminate confusion where one road is Barry Drive, Cooyong Street, Ballumbir Street and Coranderrk Street all within the space of a few kilometres.

Here is what it looked like before the change
.

Barry Drive turns into Cooyong Street at the intersection with Northbourne Avenue, the red dot marks the point where Cooyong Street becomes Ballumbir Street, and the blue dot represents the point where Ballumbir Street becomes Coranderrk Street. The only change is that the entire area between the red and blue dots is now Cooyong Street.

Ultimately this doesn’t solve much, as Cooyong Street is still wedged in the middle of Barry Drive and Coranderrk Street on the one bit of road. The better thing to do would be to just have Barry Drive as the main road up to Northbourne Avenue, and then have Cooyong Street as the semi-suburban/metro street from Northbourne Avenue to the termination of the road at Parkes Way (not show on this map).

To be perfectly honest with you, I can’t understand why the stretch of road from the blue dot to Parkes Way is Coranderrk Street when Coranderrk Street also comes out of the right of the blue dot, which is a T-intersection between Coranderrk St (white road) and Cooyong/Ballumbir/Coranderrk (yellow road).

If you’re confused, well you’re not the only one. The street signs were recently upgraded in this area and they refer to Ballumbir Street, which is odd considering that the idea for the change has been floating about since 1998 and received support in “public consultation” in December, which seemed to form part of the whole street sign upgrade process.

Here is a press release from the ACT Planning and Land Authority ^[1] which should help to confuse the issue a bit more for you (original press release here ^[2]).

City street renamed

The ACT Planning and Land Authority has approved the renaming of Ballumbir Street in the City Centre to Cooyong Street.

Chief Planning Executive Neil Savery said that geographically, Ballumbir Street is a continuation of Cooyong Street.

“Travelling along the two, it is logical to interpret them as being the same street,” Mr Savery said.

“The change is about helping people find their way around the City and reducing confusion where street names currently change along the length of a street.”

Mr Savery said the idea to change the name of Ballumbir to Cooyong Street – and also Binara Street to Allara Street – had been identified in 1998 during previous planning studies and, in 2005, the Canberra Central Program revisited the issue due to its street sign replacement project.

“As part of the Government’s Canberra Central Program, street signs throughout the City are being progressively upgraded to make them easier to read.

“It is an important part of the Canberra Central Program to ensure the city is easy to get around in and street signs are one of the fundamental ways we can achieve this.”

The public was consulted in December 2005 about proposals to change the names of Ballumbir and Binara Streets to Cooyong and Allara Streets respectively.

The Ballumbir/Cooyong name change received positive support, but significant objections were raised about the Binara/Allara change.

“Consequently, Binara Street’s name will not change,” Mr Savery said.

“To help people through the transition of Ballumbir Street’s name change, new street signs are being arranged for Cooyong Street that will have a second sign below them containing the words ‘formerly Ballumbir Street’.

“These secondary signs will remain in place for the foreseeable future.”

More Information: George Rummer 02 6205 4715

So they want roads to have one name for their duration, but still have three names for this one road…and I wonder how they went about consulting the public, one can only assume that it was the usual “place an ad in the Canberra Times Classifieds and then go ahead anyway” scenario. (Although if they would like to prove me wrong then I’m all ears).

It is worthwhile noting that the PDF version of the press release (linked above) contains ACT Planning and Land Authority’s “vision”, namely:

Canberra, a city like no other; an ideal city.

Well, one out of two ain’t bad…

Samuel