MOST people have difficulty understanding why successive governments do nothing about serious community problems such as the Enterprise AvenueClyde Road intersection traffic gridlock at Berwick.
And why won’t the government fix the noise barrier situation along the Berwick Bypass section of the Monash Freeway?
People from throughout the southeast region use Clyde Road and now we have an influx of thousands of people living along its environs with thousands more to come.
Population growth impacts intolerably on both these problems.
Despite this, they get put on the planners’ back burner with a range of reasons, one being priority.
If the situation impacting on businesses in the Enterprise Avenue precinct and the abuse of privacy and nights of noise and sleeplessness for people living along the freeway are not priorities, then nothing is.
Why did the former government upgrade Clyde Road in the area south of the freeway in preference to beginning the work at High Street, Berwick, and through the railway crossing to the north side of the freeway? The simple reason for that is politics. Because of a lobby in that area, politicians made a bad decision and left the busier northern section to the fairies.
I have been criticised for continually raising these issues in the press, but I don’t intend to let them rest until they are fixed.
Liberal candidate for Gembrook Simon Wildes invited Opposition Leader Ted Baillieu to inspect the Enterprise Avenue site and he said there was a need to conduct a feasibility study into the area.
Maybe there is a need to conduct a feasibility study into the wider area.
But no study is needed to make a decision that traffic signals are needed at Enterprise Avenue in the short term to give order and fairness to this intersection. Fairness to people trying to get into the railway car park on the eastern side of Clyde Road, and to those trying to do business on the western side of Clyde Road.
Residents have been unable to have this matter considered during the normal course of business, but now is not normal.
We are moving into a silly season — it is election time. That is a time when statistics have no place, when commonsense has no place, when projects are timed for official openings, when projects are announced, when highranking politicians visit our area in droves, when the only thing that counts is votes.
Now is the time for people who want this part of Clyde Road fixed, and the noise barriers along the freeway built, to come out and say so and to say it loud and clear.