Tuesday, 17 March 2020

Evelyn electorate transport infrastructure

Ms VALLENCE (Evelyn) (14:00): Roads and road safety, traffic congestion and public transport are top priorities for local residents and businesses in my electorate. In last year’s state budget sadly the Andrews Labor government did not allocate one cent to road projects in my electorate—no commitment and not one cent to duplicate the rail line between Mooroolbark and Lilydale as part of the Level Crossing Removal Project and not one cent on upgrading the road network in Mooroolbark, Chirnside Park and Lilydale to cope with growth.

The government is installing sky rail stations at Mooroolbark and Lilydale but has failed to engage the community and is not spending one cent to relieve traffic congestion or improve train reliability. Boom gates will be replaced with traffic lights, with the government failing to show how traffic congestion will improve. The Lilydale train line has failed punctuality targets now for 14 months in a row, and only duplicating the line will address that. Also, at the new Kinley estate around 8000 new residents and around 6000 new cars on the road are expected in that area that is already very congested, and the government must not continue ignoring this.

With the state budget approaching it is now time for the government to take transport infrastructure in my community seriously and allocate sufficient funds to duplicate the rail track between Mooroolbark and Lilydale, build a new train station at Kinley, increase car parking at the Lilydale train station and fix the rail bridge and single-lane traffic bottleneck at Mooroolbark and Hull roads at Mooroolbark.