Tuesday, 10 September 2024

Great Ocean Road traffic management

Richard RIORDAN (Polwarth) (19:09): (825) My adjournment this evening is for the Minister for Roads and Road Safety. The action I seek from the minister is to replace the temporary traffic lights on the Great Ocean Road that are helping manage traffic at the reconstruction of the Spout Creek bridge. The reason this is important is we are now starting to move into heavy traffic and event traffic along the Great Ocean Road. We have got school holidays coming up, and Amy’s Gran Fondo is coming up this weekend. Last weekend people were queueing for nearly an hour in order to get through to Lorne, and unfortunately in the opposite direction there was no-one waiting. So what the locals are finding is that at peak times – Fridays, weekends, Sunday afternoons – they need to replace the traffic lights with manual traffic control operators to make sure they get the flow right, because it is going to damage tourism on the Great Ocean Road. This blockage at Spout Creek is estimated to be there well into next year – probably Easter or so next year. It is a very long time to be scaring visitors and tourists away from the Great Ocean Road.

So the ask is quite simple: we need a better system to manage the flow of traffic so that we can let traffic go in a more organised way and a more sensible way. This would bring great relief to the many people that work each side of the broken bridge. Those in Anglesea and Aireys Inlet that are having to commute to Lorne for work will be able to get there in a timely fashion, but also for our much-needed visitor economy we do not want people missing their weddings and we do not want people not getting to their restaurant booking on time. We do not want people missing the many events that are held in Lorne now, and not only Lorne but Apollo Bay and other communities along the Great Ocean Road. So this is an important issue. It is a simple fix. The community understands that you cannot magic a bridge up in a day or a weekend; it is going to take some time, but the community needs better support here. It needs a little bit of extra common sense applied so that we can get the road as functional as is practically possible.