Fourteen businesses near the Wheelers Lane railway crossing have banded together to urge Dubbo City Council to reconsider the road closure while upgrade works are undertaken.
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Council is widening Wheelers Lane to create a four-lane carriageway, in conjunction with work by John Holland to install boom gates and new signals.
Currently, one lane of the road is closed for the first stage of works to occur, however soon the road will be closed in both directions for up to four months.
The business owners, represented by East Bake Bakery owner Bart Shanks said they were concerned the closure would severely impact their sales. Mr Shanks said the businesses were worried the longer the project went, the more likely customers were to create new buying patterns and go somewhere else.
"My concern is that maybe some of those businesses won't come out of this. I certainly hope that's not the case but I wouldn't be surprised if it is."
- Councillor Bill Kelly
However, councillor Greg Matthews said the timeframe for the $1.8 million project could be halved by paying an additional $360,000. "I think that's just the burden we're going to have to pay," Cr Mathews said.
"We're going to have to find that $360,000 from somewhere because the businesses in that area are going to do it extremely tough to be closed for eight weeks and it's going to break them at 16 weeks.
"It's often quoted it takes 30 days to make or break a habit; you give them 16 weeks and they'll forget where those businesses are."
Councillor Kelly also threw his support behind Mr Shanks and the businesses.
"My concern is that maybe some of those businesses won't come out of this. I certainly hope that's not the case but I wouldn't be surprised if it is."
Closing the road for 16 weeks was unacceptable, councillor Allan Smith said.
"[The engineers] have said they can do it shorter if we increase the budget. Now that's a cost to the whole community but there's an economic cost to the community by shutting that road down for 16 weeks," he said.
Cr Smith said council had to get its priorities right and "get in, get this job done and get out of the road".
Mr Shanks said council should consider not blocking off the road completely while the work was undertaken.
He also suggested increasing the work to include more shifts like weekends to reduce the overall timeframe.
Councillors Ben Shields, Lyn Griffiths, John Walkom, Tina Reynolds and Greg Mohr also voiced their support for the works to be completed in a shorter period of time.
