IT'S AN issue that's been around for more than eight years.

But when the interests of road safety, a high school and businesses clash, it seems there is no straightforward solution.

The issue is lack of parking, school zones and zebra crossings surrounding Warwick State High School.

After a failed attempt late last year with the shared zone, the council is again looking at new strategies.

Southern Downs Regional Council community development officer Pam Burley has been placed in charge of finding a solution.

Mrs Burley attended the Warwick and District Road Safety group meeting earlier this week to talk about her plan of attack.

"We want to find a resolution," Mrs Burley said.

"I'm visiting everyone in the area to help identify their needs.

"Firstly, I needed to clarify if the school and businesses still had the same issues."

Mrs Burley said the primary concern was pedestrian safety.

"We're working closely with the school and the P&C," she said.

"We're also working with the students leaders as well."

Mrs Burley will hold a forum at the beginning of August which will include directly affected members of the community, police and Main Roads.

"The idea is to have all the key people in the forum so we can come up with a few workable solutions," she said.

"I'd like to have council engineers so they could tell us if the solution was possible.

"There's no point coming up with something and then having the engineers tell us we can't do it."

Secretary of the Warwick and District Road Safety committee Andrew Gale said their (the groups') ideal solution was to move cars away from Palmerin St.

"Everyone wants to park out the front of IGA," he said.

"I think we need to sacrifice car parks for safety.

"There needs to be a pedestrian crossing at IGA."

President of the Warwick High School P&C, Mark Wheeldon, agreed with the group's suggestion.

"We don't want to wait for an accident," he said.

"A straight zebra crossing would take away 11 car parks, but the safe option, a staggered crossing would take away 13."

Mr Wheeldon said another option they had proposed was metered parking out the front of the school.

"The two major issues is lack of pedestrian crossings and school zones," he said.

"If we could get more school zoning that would be a start.

"I'd like to see it happen on all four sides of the school."

Mr Wheeldon said he would also like to see traffic moved away from Victoria St because it was a designated B-double route.