A million-dollar price tag to fix troublesome Wollongong rat run

Residents of The Avenue have been calling for action to make their street safer for years.

At present, the road is used as a rat run between Figtree and Coniston, with cars often travelling too fast for the conditions.

There is also a lack of footpaths, with the terrain of the nature strips forcing pedestrians to walk along the road.

The Avenue made news again after Cr Bradbery's comments in Monday's Wollongong City Council meeting that he wished he could 'rip it up and start again', but couldn't due to the cost.

Kate Sergent lives on the street - she had previously invited Cr Bradbery to try and push a pram along The Avenue - and said the budget explanation keeps coming up whenever residents raise the issue with the council.

"Budget seems to be the thing that council keeps throwing back at residents," Ms Sergent said.

"Gordon Bradbury's been in 11 years or so, he's been aware of The Avenue and all its issues over the past 11 years but the same consistent message from council is budget. That's extremely frustrating, it's almost feeling like it's an excuse."

She was especially concerned about the four-way intersection with Taronga Avenue, which is used by children on their way to and from school.

Ms Sergent's son has started school and she was shocked at the busy intersection when she started walking him there.

"I walked him down there on the first day, there was almost a collision," she said.

"These little kids are navigating The Avenue, a lot of them on their own because their parents have to work. It makes me feel sick and an accident is imminent."

She would like to see footpaths installed, and suggested parking could be restricted to one side of The Avenue and the other used to create a footpath - because the terrain on the nature strip would make installing one there difficult.

Cr Bradbery agreed that the problems with The Avenue are not new; he said it stemmed right back to when it was first constructed - which is what he meant by wishing he could rip it up.

"It was built at a time where standards and expectations weren't anywhere near what they are today in terms of safety in pedestrian access and car movements," Cr Bradbery said.

He said short-term solutions like speed humps and other traffic-calming measures were on the drawing board but the creation of a footpath along the nature strip would be a "very big engineering challenge", requiring relocation of driveways, building retaining walls and dealing with the many large trees along the roadside.

"It's not that it's going to be a little cosmetic exercise to solve the problems that they want," he said.

"It's major expenditure and would therefore require a rethink of the whole street to make it more pedestrian friendly and easier to use."

He said the cost to fix all the problems along the road would cost the council millions of dollars, which was the main issue.

"What they want and expect is, from my perspective, not unreasonable but the solution to the problems and the issues are going to cost a lot of money," he said.

"It's rectifying a problem that's going right back to the formation of the way the street was constructed."