Mr MORRIS (Mornington) (17:13:47) — I raise a matter this evening for the Minister for Roads and Road Safety, and the action I am seeking from the minister is that he direct VicRoads to immediately undertake a tube traffic count in the southern section of Main Street, Mornington, and to transmit the resulting count to myself and to the Mornington Peninsula Shire Council.
This is a locale that I have raised on a number of occasions in adjournments over the last 18 months or so. It is a very highly trafficked area. It is an area that is under the control of and managed by VicRoads, although they have been trying to off-load it to the council for a number of years now.
In August 2017 I asked the minister to provide traffic counts for Main Street, and he came back to me with a figure of just under 15 000 vehicles a day as a two-way count.
In February this year I asked him when those counts were undertaken as they seemed to be a little bit low. He responded and indicated that they were in fact undertaken in February 2014, so it is very close to five years since those counts were undertaken and of course there has been significant growth in traffic in that time.
In that second response the minister also indicated that VicRoads had undertaken traffic counts using the traffic signal detectors at the intersection of Nepean Highway and Main Street in January 2016, January 2018 and May 2018 and had come up with volumes of around about 18 000 vehicles a day, slightly lower in May.
The issue with those more recent counts, though, is if they are using the traffic signal indicators to count them, you would capture traffic from vehicles turning right into Main Street from the southbound lane of Nepean Highway and you would capture traffic continuing on to Main Street from Mornington-Tyabb Road but you would not capture the traffic — or I do not believe you would capture the traffic — turning left from the northbound lane of the Nepean Highway onto Main Street.
If that is a notional 25 per cent of total volume, and it could easily be that high, then in fact we are not talking about 18 000 vehicles a day, we are potentially talking about 22 500 vehicles a day.
The minister has already indicated that the two-way traffic capacity for Main Street would be between 20 000 and 28 000 vehicles a day. If it has not reached that point already, it is getting very, very close to that tipping point.
The main concern with this locale is pedestrian safety. There is a refuge in the middle of the street but there is a dire need for a crossing. VicRoads is reluctant to put one in, but we need those traffic counts to give us accurate figures to demonstrate the need.
Legislative Assembly 6 September 2018