Tuesday, 7 May 2024

Reservoir road safety

Nathan LAMBERT (Preston) (14:37): The second issue concerns traffic and road safety. As we know, a lot of suburban streets in places like Reservoir are only 6.5 metres wide, and because we have done a lot of townhouse subdivisions in those areas there are cars permanently parked on both sides. That means there is a fairly narrow gap of only 3 metres for traffic to go through, and there are a lot of concerns with that, but people locally are particularly concerned about the fact that in most places it is still legal to drive 50 kilometres per hour through that gap, and unfortunately a small number of people drive even faster. I do think there is a case for automatically zoning such roads to 40 kilometres per hour, and where they are through roads, certainly installing speed bumps and other traffic-calming measures. I refer specifically to Invermay Street, Darebin Boulevard, Whitby Street, Cuthbert Road and other streets in the Reservoir area. And I should add, where there is a panelbeater or a sportsground at the end of the road that generates even more parking, those traffic management and safety issues get worse.