the federal Labor Party’s decision to scrap the duplication of Wellington Road in the 2022-23 budget delivered on Tuesday 25 October has raised concern for local emergency services and politicians.
Emerald SES Unit Controller Ben Owen said there “wouldn’t be a week go past” where crews would not see an incident at the arterial Berwick Road intersection.
“The high density of traffic with the population that’s increasing within the Cardinia Shire area filtering through from Wellington road, It’s not equipped to deal with it now,” Mr Owen said.
Mr Owen said Emerald SES crews have also been called out to incidents on Cardinia Creek Road which joins Wellington Road, when people try and overtake slow vehicles to reach the straight stretch of road.
“That’s when incidents can happen – without the duplication and being that better traffic flow with overtaking lanes,” Mr Owen said.
“You’ve only got to go to the road from 3.30pm in the afternoon…it banks back from pretty much Stud Road all the way to [the] Belgrave-Hallam roundabout with traffic…so it’s not fit for purpose.
Without the $110 million upgrades for the duplication of Wellington Road, between Napoleon Road and Berwick Road announced by the Liberal government in 2019, Mr Owen said there could be “loss of life and injuries” without such upgrades.
La Trobe MP Jason Wood, who lobbied for improvements to the road and committed $10 million in funding for the arteriole in 2007, said the major issue with having one lane between Napoleon Road and Berwick road is fire danger.
“In 2019 we had the Bunyip fires…if the wind had gone the other direction, and gone west rather than east, it would have gone right through Cockatoo, Gembrook and Emerald,” Mr Wood said.
“That was my main reason [for going] to the PM at the time, Scott Morrison, and others going ‘this just has to be funded, we just cannot have one lane out on Wellington road, the major arterial up there and also be used for those living in the Dandenong Ranges; Belgrave South and [other areas].”
And despite Labor’s candidate for La Trobe at the time, Simon Curtis, in 2019 promising funding towards improving Wellington Road, this promise has been “broken” in the federal budget, Mr Wood said.
“It’s not just such a broken [promise], It’s a potentially deadly broken promise, which could see lives lost in the event of a bushfire,” he said.
In a statement to the Star Mail, a spokesperson for the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government said the costs of the $110 million pledged by the previous government to fully fund the Wellington Road duplication were “vastly underdone”.
“The total cost to deliver the project is estimated to be at least $630 million,” the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government spokesperson said.
