Charlestown Shopping Town CBD Including Bus Priority Scheme

Charlestown Shopping Town is the largest shopping centre in the Newcastle and Lake Macquarie local government areas. Developers had prepared plans to double its capacity, and Lake Macquarie Council wanted the surrounding developments integrated. The complex is bounded by the intersection of the Pacific Highway and Charlestown Road, with developments on both sides of the highway.

The developers had built an elaborate model of the proposed shopping complex in Paramics. Lake Macquarie Council approached us to develop a simpler model to independently verify the developers’ results.

The modelling challenge was the Pacific Highway, which runs north–south through the developments. Considering the possible alternative paths for traffic led to a larger than expected study area, including the Charlestown bypass. The Dynameq modelling produced results that correlated with concerns existing residents had raised about traffic increases on local streets, particularly once bus priority schemes reduced Pacific Highway capacity to encourage use of the planned bus interchange, pushing some traffic onto the bypass and some onto local rat-runs.

External auditors reviewed both the Paramics and Dynameq results and concluded that the Dynameq model, with its wider network of parallel paths, produced more believable results than the Paramics model’s narrower study area. The Dynameq model was used to develop the Charlestown Master Plan.