Article: Level crossings choking city traffic flow: RACV

[ozbob]

From the Herald Sun click here!

Level crossings choking city traffic flow: RACV

Level crossings choking city traffic flow: RACV
Clay Lucas
September 21, 2010

MELBOURNE'S worst traffic congestion spots will worsen dramatically unless the state government removes more of Melbourne's 182 railway level crossings, the RACV says.

The motoring group, which has more than 2 million members, yesterday released its biennial survey on Melbourne's 10 worst road intersections.

It found four of the worst traffic headaches were caused by level crossings.

The level crossing at Murrumbeena station was rated the worst. With 20 trains crossing the road between 8 and 9am each day, boom gates can remain down for as long as 38 minutes in the hour.

Melbourne's level crossings stand in stark contrast to suburban Sydney, where a government program in the 1960s removed all but three. Around a dozen level crossings also still remain in outer Sydney.

RACV traffic engineer Peter Daly said the Victorian government had failed to rid Melbourne of level crossings and replace them with grade separations - by building bridges or tunnels.

This was done on Springvale Road, Nunawading, in January, at a cost of $140 million.

Mr Daly said it was money well spent, improving traffic flow dramatically.

In 2008 the government pledged $440 million towards removing level crossings, but Mr Daly said that ''barely scratches the surface''.

State opposition transport spokesman Terry Mulder said the government had been too slow removing level crossings, which created traffic headaches and were also dangerous.

''Every new train that runs on Melbourne's metropolitan network comes into conflict with a level crossing,'' Mr Mulder said.

He said the $1.35 billion myki ticket project should never have been funded while so many level crossings remained.

''How many level crossings could you have removed instead of [introducing] myki?''

Also named by the RACV as traffic headaches were level crossings in High Street near Reservoir station, on Burke Road near Gardiner station in Glen Iris and on Clayton Road next to Clayton station.

Other roads to be singled out as badly clogged included the Chandler Highway in Alphington and Kew, which the government in 2008 considered widening but later decided against. The road narrows to one lane each way as it crosses the Yarra River.

Heidelberg's Banksia Street-Heidelberg Road intersection, which is packed with cars and trucks each morning headed for the Eastern Freeway or the Metropolitan Ring Road, was also highlighted. Traffic problems at this choked intersection have worsened since the opening of EastLink.

Curiously, the RACV survey included none of the worst congested traffic spots in Melbourne's western suburbs, where inadequate road infrastructure has created daily traffic headaches for thousands of drivers.

A spokesman for Roads Minister Tim Pallas said the government would spend $1 million this year and next looking at the possibility of removing 11 level crossings along the Dandenong rail corridor, between Caulfield and South Dandenong.

''The investigation will consider which sites are most suitable, with a particular focus on the Caulfield and Murrumbeena areas,'' the spokesman said.