Middleborough Road grade separation footbridge needed
Hansard: 13 March 2007 ASSEMBLY
Mr CLARK (Box Hill) — I raise with the Minister for Roads and Ports the Middleborough Road grade separation project. I ask the minister to take action to restore pedestrian access in the area by constructing a pedestrian footbridge across the railway line to Box Hill Cemetery and restoring a path along the north side of the railway line between Sagoe Lane and Middleborough Road. This is an issue that has been left with the new minister by the previous transport minister. It is due to the last-minute rush by the Bracks government to try to get moving on a promise it made in the 2002 election campaign to construct this grade separation project, but it failed to take any action until mid-2006; and because of the rush there was no public consultation and no opportunity for public input on the design, leaving a number of serious and ongoing problems.
There has long been pedestrian access across the railway line via a footpath that runs from Sagoe Lane on the north of the railway line to Box Hill cemetery on the south. This pedestrian access is important because there is a lack of car parking near the cemetery. Many people, particularly elderly people, who want to visit loved ones at the cemetery park their cars in Sagoe Lane or alongside Whitehorse Reserve, from where they used to walk across the railway line to the cemetery. Now the line has been lowered about 5 metres by a cutting that has cut off that access. A petition with many signatures was taken up on behalf of cemetery visitors, and copies were provided to the minister, to the Whitehorse council and to me.
I first raised this issue with the previous minister in July last year. The minister’s chief of staff replied in September, saying that the railway line would be lowered by 5 metres, that therefore an overpass could not be provided, that instead there would be a new access point at the north-east corner of the cemetery, that parking would be unaffected and that pedestrians could walk to the new access point. Now we see that you could virtually lay a plank across the cutting as it exists and that the reasons previously given for not being able to construct this overpass are unsubstantiated.
The government’s tune has now changed, with the new minister’s chief of staff replying in January by saying that there is now an 8-metre clearance required from the top of the walkway to the top of the railway lines and raising various other objections relating to land acquisition, design, tree loss and cost. Most of these objections seem to be spurious. You can just look at the site to see that it is perfectly feasible to create a footbridge across it.
To add insult to injury, when the government promised the alternative access point, it needed a path along the north side of the railway line, which VicRoads is now refusing to commit to restoring, meaning that the people who parked there previously will have to walk the long way around via Whitehorse Road and the Box Hill High School to reach the promised access point. In both respects the community has been badly let down. These are problems caused by the previous minister. I ask the new minister not to rely just on departmental or VicRoads advice but to look at the issue for himself.