Highway matters

Vicroads has set up a community consultation on its plans to clear vegetation from the Pyrenees Highway between Newstead and Muckleford South.

Readers may remember that FOBIF objected to some of these removals, arguing that the safety objective could be better achieved by rumble strips and reduced speed limits on the winding stretch of road. Vicroads’ response to that was to say, effectively, that reduced speeds would make no difference, something we found hard to understand. The Vicroads 2016-7 Annual report noted that ‘The most common crash types were run-offroad on high-speed country roads and intersection crashes in metropolitan Melbourne.’ On the face of it, efforts to reduce speeds, along with traffic calming measures, might be a good response to this brutal fact. Vicroads’ response, however, seems to give up on the speed matter, and hope to soften the impact of any accidents.

Vicroads last consulted the community in 2016 and since then they ‘have been developing strategies to mitigate risk to fauna and flora as part of our obligations under federal legislation.’ We understand that this involves assessing the impact of tree removal on Swift Parrot populations.

The consultation is a drop in session on Tuesday January 8, from 5 pm to 8 pm [drop in any time you can], at the Newstead Recreation centre, 21 Panmure Street.

We’re offering this info tentatively, since Vicroads’ email on the matter sets the date at ‘Tuesday 8 January December 2018’…

You can verify all this by emailing an RSVP to NRengagement@roads.vic.gov.au

A justification of the project can be found here.

You can find FOBIF’s posts on the matter by putting ‘Pyrenees Highway’ into the search box at the top of this page.

We believe works are due to start not long after the consultation.