Wednesday, 20 March 2019

 Mr T BULL (Gippsland East) (09:54): Last sitting week I advised the house of the roadworks disaster between Stratford and Sale on the Princes Highway. This week I move my attention to a different section of what is now being referred to locally as the Princes track—that is, the stretch between Stratford and Bairnsdale. The reason it is referred to as the Princess track now, rather than highway, is it resembles more of a track. Even the local roads contractors are referring to it with that tag. The concern I bring to the house’s attention today is perhaps a bigger issue than what I raised last week, and it relates to construction standards on this $51 million project. I am certainly not a roads construction expert myself, but when you have a number of people who have worked in the industry for many years and also those currently working in the industry telling you the standards are wrong, you sit up and you take some notice. The main issue raised is that the centre of the road line, which obviously was previously a single line, has been widened to 1.4 metres to cater for the centre-of-the-road barriers. This has pushed the traffic lanes and vehicles further left, and road users are now driving over the old ripple strip which was the edge of the road—the ripple strip or the fog line. The problem is that this stretch where cars, buses and trucks are now travelling is what was built as a non-trafficable shoulder. It was not ever intended to carry those loads of traffic. This has been brought up by— (Time expired)