Tuesday, 28 October 2025

 Nathan LAMBERT (Preston) (01:57): (1365) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Roads and Road Safety, and the action I seek is a review of the impact of the no-right-hand-turn barriers installed at the intersection of David Street and Plenty Road in Preston. These works were delivered under the federal blackspot program, a very long running program that has a strong track record of improving road safety outcomes at high-risk intersections across Victoria. The project was developed with input from Darebin council as part of the funding and design process and of course the intent of the program is commendable. Our government strongly supports measures that make our roads safer.

However, local residents have raised concerns that the design changes at the intersection have created issues for local access and traffic flow. To briefly describe it at this time of night, the barriers now prevent right-hand turns in or out of David Street. That does reduce some of the rat running that we were seeing along David Street and Patterson Street in particular, which was a very common rat run. Some of that traffic is now presumably going through the signalised Bell Street and Plenty Road intersection, which is a safer outcome. However, some of that traffic is probably going straight along Patterson Street instead, which is frustrating for people on the northern half of that street, and also frustrating for any of us trying to get through the Gower Street and Plenty Road intersection, where the right-hand turns already bank up. Furthermore, the changes have reduced the local access for residents coming up Plenty Road.

As it stands, there is no right-hand turn at Bell Street, there is no right-hand turn at Livingstone Parade and there is now no right-hand turn at David Street. That means people are driving a long way, all the way up to Gower Street to come back to their homes, or else they are now doing a new rat run, which is they try and get across to Hotham Street and then have to complete what is a quite difficult manoeuvre to cross six lanes of Bell Street, turn right and turn left, and they have to do that without the benefit of some ‘keep clears’ that we did hope could be provided at those intersections. So given all those consequences, I ask the minister to review the installation of the no-right-hand-turn barriers at this location, including the safety data, traffic modelling and whether any modifications could achieve the same safety outcomes whilst restoring some local access.