FAQs

The City of Busselton and Shire of Augusta Margaret River are key tourist destinations and population centres within regional WA.

The South West region has experienced significant population growth over the past decade and continues to be a popular destination to visit, which means there are more people driving on City and Shire roads than ever before. 

Between 2019 and 2023, 195 people were killed or seriously injured on roads in the City of Busselton and Shire of Augusta Margaret River. This represents one of the highest figures in regional WA.

One way to improve the safety of our roads and reduce fatalities or serious injuries is to reduce speed limits across high-traffic areas within the City and Shire.  

The Safer Speeds Trial seeks to understand if a holistic, area-wide approach to reducing speed limits provides less confusion and frustration for people travelling on regional roads. 

Data shows that reducing speed limits decreases the risk of people being seriously injured or killed on our roads. Through the holistic, area-wide approach, the Trial would implement speed limit reductions with the aim to reduce the harmful impact of crashes. The proposed speed limits have been designed to:

• Give people involved in a crash a better chance of survival
• Reduce frustration and confusion by making speed limits more consistent at a regional scale
• Increase the time drivers have to react to avoid a crash
• Make roads and streets safer and more pleasant for local residents, children, walkers, bike riders and people on mobility devices

The proposed speed limits have been chosen by considering multiple factors including:

• Research on best-practice approaches
• Over 200 nominations for speed limit reductions from the community during engagement in 2022
• Petitions and requests from the community for speed limit reductions
• History of crashes resulting in fatalities and serious injuries 
• Traffic volumes
• Changes in land uses, such a new housing developments and subdivisions
• Safety features of roads

Several routes that are proposed to see their speed limit reduced as part of this Trial, were driven to see how the Trial would impact travel times. In almost all cases the increase in journey time was less than two minutes and for some journeys, it was a matter of seconds. The increase in driving time was an average of 62 seconds, across all routes driven.

The results of some of the journeys tested include:

• Abbey to Busselton Light Industrial Area (Strelly Street) – additional 10 seconds
• Georgiana Molloy Anglican School (Yalyalup) to Busselton Primary School (Geographe) – additional 10 seconds
• Redgate Beach to Witchcliffe Ecovillage – additional 51 seconds
• Cowaramup Town Centre to Gracetown Beach – additional 90 seconds

The Safer Speeds Trial focuses on roads managed by local governments. Any feedback received about higher order roads managed by Main Roads, like Busselton Bypass, Caves Road and the rural parts of Bussell Highway will be passed on for consideration.

The Trial proposes to focus on the urban areas of Busselton and most of the roads between Bussell Highway and the coast as this forms a coherent boundary for the Trial area that incorporates almost all townsites and key tourist destinations. This area is typified by roads where:

• There are higher traffic volumes 
• There are homes or businesses, and in some cases new housing developments
• There is a higher likelihood of conflicts and crashes between different road users (e.g. people driving, walking, riding, scooting) 

This means some areas have not been included in the Trial. At this scale the Trial will take several months to implement. Additional roads may be able to be included at a later stage following analysis of community feedback.