I raise a matter this evening for the Minister for Roads and Road Safety, and the action I seek is that the minister act to correct the absence of appropriate exit signage for Mount Eliza and Mount Martha from Peninsula Link.
Earlier this year I wrote to the minister and requested his assistance in resolving these signage issues, and in the correspondence I noted a number of matters that I will summarise for the house.
Since the construction of Peninsula Link there have been difficulties with signage for both towns, and by that I mean there is essentially not any at all. There is no signage for Mount Eliza at neither the Somerville Road or the Bungower Road exits, and for Mount Martha there is a small sign at the Red Hill exit, which is essentially the access route to the southernmost portion of that town. In fact it is well past Mount Martha township; it is at the foot of Mount Martha on the southern side.
There is no signage at the Mornington-Tyabb Road exit, which is the last point from which you can leave Peninsula Link before you pass Mount Martha entirely.
These towns are not insignificant specs on the map; they each have a population of around 17 000 people, commercial areas, many facilities and many attractions for visitors using the main access road to the Mornington Peninsula.
It is simply not good enough that they are for all intents and purposes invisible to every user of this road.
The minister responded earlier this month, and I thank him for that, but unfortunately he did not provide any comfort at all and he certainly did not resolve the problem by ordering the erection of signage. In fact his advice to me was that additional directional and tour signs were installed late in 2015—which of course I was aware of—and he then went on to say:
During that time, signage to Mount Eliza from Peninsula Link via Bungower Road (a local road) was and currently is considered inappropriate, as it is an indirect route. Arterial roads such as the Nepean and Moorooduc highways provide a more direct and signed route to Mount Eliza.
If you are simply looking at a map, that is probably correct, but that route does not take into account having to drive all the way through Frankston, dealing with the traffic and consequently adding a considerable length of time to the journey. By far the quickest way to access Mount Eliza is via Peninsula Link, and I happen to know that because that is where I live and that is how I travel there.
It is also worth pointing out that in his letter the minister made no reference to the Somerville exit, which also serves Mount Eliza, and he made no reference to Mount Martha whatsoever.
The fact is that many thousands of people use Peninsula Link every day to travel and many thousands of visitors on weekends and public holidays use Peninsula Link to access the peninsula. Bungower Road may be a local road but it is the major access road from the link to both Mount Eliza and to Mornington.
While I thank the minister for his initial response, I ask him to investigate the situation further and set aside the false notion that people do not travel on Peninsula Link to Mount Martha and to Mount Eliza.