By Violet Li and Cam Lucadou-Wells
In a further election pitch, Labor has announced $10 million for planning work to upgrade Western Port Highway.
The early works are said to investigate options to improve safety on the 100km/h road that runs across three electorates: Holt, Issacs, and Dunkley.
Infrastructure and Transport Minister Catherine King was flanked by Labor MPs Mark Dreyfus, Jodie Belyea and Cassandra Fernando for the announcement at Lyndhurst on 2 April.
“We’re giving Victorians the infrastructure they deserve after being short-changed by the former Coalition government,” King said.
“We’re fixing roads right across the state; we’ve doubled our road maintenance funding to local councils, reinstated road maintenance indexation that was scrapped under the former government and are investing heavily in our regions and cities.”
The project is part of a $1.2 billion Victorian Road Blitz, including $200 million of State Government funding.
Ms King noted a growing housing development along the Western Port Highway. She said with the planning funding, the authority would look into what needed to be done on different parts of the highway.
“You can see some parts of the road are already dual carriageway. It’s separated. You’ve got good shoulders. It’s relatively safe,” she said.
“There are some intersections that are not coping with the volume of traffic. There are other parts of the road where it again narrows down to a non-grade separated road.
“We are trying to look at what safety treatments we can put upon those. Then for future planning, further full duplication is really what we’re looking at.”
When asked if further funding would be committed, she said: “If we’re committing planning money, you can be assured that we will be looking to commit construction money when we know exactly what it is we’re going to do.
“With this particular announcement, we know already there are need for safety upgrades, so they are relatively simple to do.
“When you’re putting barriers along, when you’re increasing the siding so that you’re making sure people do have access to being able to move off the road if something happens.
“Those sorts of things we can do relatively quickly, but bigger infrastructure investments, that’s what the planning component of this $10 million would do.”
State transport infrastructure minister Gabrielle Williams, in a statement, said: “It’s great to have a partner in Canberra that can find Victoria on a map and help deliver critical projects that people rely on every day.”
Labor also announced $250 million for stage 2 of the Mickleham Road upgrade and $3 million to plan transport upgrades in and around Warragul and Drouin.
