The long haul

By Emma Sun
STAGGERED work times to relieve peak hour congestion was one of the solutions discussed at a City of Casey hosted forum last Wednesday.
The speakers at the Better Roads, Better Buses, Better Trains forum highlighted and discussed the main offending roads, including the Monash Freeway, Narre Warren-Cranbourne Road and Thompsons Road.
Many Casey residents travel more than two hours each way to work, which is often double the amount of time they would spend during non-peak times.
They have likened the conditions on the road to that of being in a car park, due to how long traffic can remain at a standstill during peak hour.
City of Casey manager transport Paul Hamilton said many residents were uncertain about using the Monash Freeway because there was no way to know how long a trip would take.
“A Monash University Berwick student had an exam at Caulfield at 9.30am. They left at 7am, leaving almost two and a half hours leeway, but there was an accident on the freeway and they were 10 minutes late,” he said.
“There was no doubt the student was stressed beyond belief, which is not what we want to happen.”
One resident travelled 53 kilometres from Berwick to Alphington to work using the Monash, Eastlink and Eastern freeways and said it took longer to drive the 10km stretch of the Monash freeway than it did the rest of the 40km.
Another resident said traffic congestion on the Monash Freeway through Casey added about half an hour to an hour to their daily trip to Clayton.
A range of solutions were discussed during question time and senior engineer at Cardinia Shire Council Daniel Przychodzki suggested staggered start and finishing times.
VicRoads manager program development metropolitan south-east region Anita Curnow thought it was a great idea and said it was already being successfully implemented by some places.
“Some schools already do that, although they’re mostly private schools.”
With the population of Casey more than doubling over the last 20 years and set to reach more than 450,000 people by 2036, long-term solutions such as arterial road upgrades were also discussed.
Mr Hamilton said Casey had one of the highest levels of car ownership per capita in Victoria and emphasised the need for the governments to invest in infrastructure and all modes of transport.
“We currently have a backlog of arterial road upgrades, which total about $1 billion for the City of Casey alone,” he said.
“It’s a very significant backlog and we need funding to deliver these services.”
The council appealed for works to be done to improve the capacity of the Monash Freeway, including a third lane on the Hallam Bypass, upgrade of the Monash/South Gippsland Freeway merge and full duplication of Thompsons Road from Dandenong-Frankston Road to the South Gippsland Freeway.
Department of Transport executive director community and place Damien Ferrie said the government was taking everything into consideration.
“We are listening to the concerns of residents and we will work to develop a high capacity of services to accommodate these needs.”
For more about the issues discussed at the forum, turn to pages 10-14.