By Mikayla van Loon
After years of campaigning, residents of Seville East have had a commitment from the state opposition that should the party be elected, Warburton Highway will be upgraded.
Opposition leader Matthew Guy and Evelyn MP Bridget Vallence met with residents on Tuesday 12 April to announce the $5 million pledge to fix the Peters Road and Warburton Highway intersection.
For residents like Joel Supple, Claire Knowles and Jackie and Andrew Butler the announcement was the first sign of monetary support received from a governmental party since they started campaigning seven years ago.
“I don’t know how much more evidence we have to present to show that it needs to be improved and it needs to be addressed,” Mr Supple said.
“To have it finally be promised that it’s going to be fixed means a lot but we’ve still got to get it done and we’ve still got to get through that period until it’s done.”
Ms Knowles said the pledge gives herself and her fellow residents hope that they won’t be fearing for their lives every time they turn into their street.
The 80km per hour section of Warburton Highway where Peters Road and Old Warburton Highway meet rises to a crest where bus stops are positioned before declining down the hill.
With no proper turning lanes, median strips or bus bays, regular rear end collisions occur, documented by the community on social media.
Knox Highway Patrol sergeant Andrew Sands said police and other emergency services attend this section of road on a regular basis for various scale collisions.
“We probably see maybe one to two collisions a month here. Most of them are injury collisions, sometimes serious injury collisions,” he said.
Sgt Sands said given the current infrastructure, widening the road would be critical to improving safety so that median strips, pedestrian refuge islands and bus pull-ins could be included.
“I think having a protected turn lane so cars turn out of the mainstream of traffic, when they’re exiting the highway into a side road is a key safety aspect from the vehicular point of view.
“It’ll probably cut out 99 per cent of the danger of the double crest because people have got time to do their maneuvers rather than feeling rushed.”
The Department of Transport (DoT) said in 2019 it completed a comprehensive survey of the intersection, where it was deemed necessary to include road reflective pavement, guideposts and to reduce the speed from 90 km/h to 80 km/h.
While other solutions are being considered by the DoT like traffic signals, additional funding has not been assigned.
“Keeping all road users safe is our number one priority, and we are always exploring ways to make our roads safer – including this stretch of Warburton Highway,” a DoT spokesperson said.
“We will continue to monitor traffic and safety at this location.”
Mr Guy said seeing the road himself and as a father of three he wouldn’t want his children to have to cross the road.
“It’s all about safety. We’ve got to do something. It’s got to be fixed,” he said.
Ms Vallence said the poor condition of roads in the Evelyn district are a major issue for the community.
“We know from Covid that we’re in metropolitan Melbourne, and when it comes to the roads budget, the government has a regional roads budget and a metro roads budget and of course we miss out,” she said.
“More people want to come out and live in the Yarra Valley. We have tourists visiting the Yarra Valley. We have commuter trucks coming through the Yarra Valley and with all that increased traffic, we need to make sure it’s as safe as possible for you.”
When asked about altering the regional metropolitan classification system, Mr Guy said something needed to change but could not give a clear response about how that would look under a Liberal government.
While Ms Knowles, Mr Supple and the Butler’s have been pleased to see tourism return to the area after Covid, they said it had increased dramatically and the road does not support the amount of visitors and cars using it so frequently.
“The road is not in good condition and they’re talking about doing all these improvements, but it’s a bad road to start with. They’re not even maintaining it,” Mr Butler said.
“This area has been grossly underfunded for decades and this area is expected to carry more and more traffic, more and more tourism and it’s not up to the job,” Ms Knowles said.
