Thursday, 6 March 2025

 Cindy McLEISH (Eildon) (17:20): (1053) I have a matter for the Minister for Roads and Road Safety, and the action I seek is for the minister to require Transport Victoria to work with Melbourne Water to put a temporary 44-tonne bridge over the aqueduct on the Eltham-Yarra Glen Road while the Maroondah Aqueduct bridge is being repaired. I have been contacted by so many constituents and locals raising their concerns about the closure, not just for themselves but also for the volume of through traffic. Most people do understand that the work needs to be done, but the closure is going to be very dangerous and quite inconvenient. The road is going to be shut for two weeks, and there are no easy detours through the area.

There is an enormous volume of traffic, not just local traffic but a lot of through traffic that goes to and from the M80 around the back through Watsons Creek onto the Melba Highway. There are trucks, cars, motorbikes, horse floats and bicycles. We saw what happened for the one week that the Melba Highway was shut: there was traffic chaos, there was a fatality and there were many, many near misses and crashes. It was a disaster, and that needs to be avoided, which is why I think they must look at a temporary bridge as an option. I worry very much that the trucks will use the Heidelberg-Kinglake Road as an option or head up through Strathewen, which is extremely narrow, steep and very risky and dangerous, as we saw with the Melba Highway closure.

People want to know if traffic counts have been done. Has VicRoads recently done traffic counts? When did this happen? Have they done them with this project in mind, and does the department actually understand the volume of traffic that uses this road, the B-doubles, the semitrailers or the buses, caravans and cars? Equally, I think they misrepresented or misunderstood and underestimated greatly the volume of traffic on the Melba Highway, because as I said, it descended into chaos when it was closed for one week, and they had to stop the closure, reopen the road and let traffic through again.

There are so many communities and towns that rely on this road to get to and from Yarra Glen. Kids go to school, people work and people use all of the services, people from Kangaroo Ground, Panton Hill and St Andrews. But it is not just these guys that are going to be impacted; it is the huge volume of traffic that comes across this road, which will not have anywhere else to go. It was mooted that they could use Breakneck Road. Well, that is named Breakneck Road for a reason, and you cannot have traffic going on there. I understand that they are making some arrangements for emergency services vehicles, because this is an escape route should a fire break out – and that is not off the cards either; that could happen. So people are really worried and would like to see a temporary bridge and even as well a temporary footbridge for kids to be able to get across to go to school.