Wednesday, 19 June 2024

Pyrenees Highway

Petition

Wendy LOVELL (Northern Victoria) (17:18): I rise to speak on a petition that I presented to Parliament yesterday on behalf of 144 petitioners living in and around Castlemaine, in central Victoria. The petition draws to the attention of the Legislative Council the anger and frustration felt by a large number of local residents and users of the Pyrenees Highway between the Calder Freeway and Castlemaine because of a recent unexpected and unexplained reduction in the speed limit to 50 kilometres per hour for nearly 7 kilometres before Castlemaine, including a section of nearly 2 kilometres where the speed limit has been reduced from 80 kilometres per hour to 50 kilometres per hour. The petitioners request that the Legislative Council call on the government to immediately reinstate the speed limits in force before the change but also to introduce sensible safety measures for pedestrians in the short section of the highway leading into Castlemaine.

This parliamentary petition is the third one on the matter after a petition of nearly 300 signatures was presented by locals to the Mount Alexander Shire Council and a change.org petition received nearly 2000 signatures. So there is obviously significant community feeling around this issue, much more than is indicated by the 144 people who signed the official petition. There are two main concerns that the petitioners have. The first concern is around the problems caused by the new speed limit itself, where a long section of road has been reduced to 50 kilometres per hour, and the second concern is around the process that led to this speed reduction.

Let me first talk about the petitioners’ concerns with the new speed limit itself. The Pyrenees Highway is an arterial road south of Bendigo that runs east to west from the Calder Freeway to Ararat. When you exit the Calder Freeway heading west you first pass through the small town of Chewton and then the larger township of Castlemaine. It is reasonable that in the commercial centres of these towns there is a lower speed limit of 50 kilometres per hour to make the roads safe for pedestrians, but the 50-kilometre-per-hour section has recently been extended further along the Pyrenees Highway and it is now almost 7 kilometres long, covering lengthy parts of the approach to Chewton and Castlemaine. Most of this section has bush and farmland on both sides of the road and very few driveways on the sides of the road. The road is used daily by many locals moving between towns as mums and dads ferry kids to school, tradies get a coffee to start the day, residents attend doctors’ appointments, ambulances fetch patients and people travel to shop, eat and meet with their friends. With the new speed limit of 50 kilometres an hour locals say that their cars are bunching up, drivers are getting frustrated, there is frequent tailgating and aggressive driving and people are overtaking in dangerous places. We should be concerned about this developing situation.

Now I will come to the petitioners’ second concern, and that is the process by which this decision was made to lower the speed limit from 80 kilometres to 50 kilometres per hour on a long section of the road. Twelve months ago I spoke in this Parliament about speed limits on this road, and I noted that the 80-kilometre section drops very quickly to 60 and then down to 50 over a very short stretch of road just before it reaches the town of Chewton. I asked the government to perform a traffic and safety audit, and I passed on the suggestion of locals that the 60-kilometre stretch be made a little bit longer so that the reduction in speed was more gradual, but that is not what happened.

Instead the Department of Transport and Planning made the drastic decision to reduce the whole section of road down to 50 kilometres per hour, which is a very significant alteration. I have been told that another member of Parliament, who also represents the area and apparently has more influence than I do, was involved in driving this change. What troubles local residents is that this change completely bypassed normal protocols. The department of transport’s own speed zoning policy states that when a significant change is proposed to an arterial road the consultation needs to be expanded to include affected road users, businesses and others who may be impacted by the new speed limit, but this is not what happened. Consultation has not been done. Businesses in Chewton have not been asked about how they might be affected. Some are worried that people are going to other towns to eat and shop because they want to avoid this section of road that is unreasonably slow.

Further, long sections of this road do not actually meet the department’s own requirements for a road speed limit of 50 kilometres an hour, because there are no retail developments, pedestrians or kerbside parking there. Who decided this road should be 50 kilometres an hour? The signatories to this petition have genuine concerns about the process behind the decision to make this whole section 50 kilometres an hour. They also have genuine concerns about the ongoing effects on local businesses.