Above is the belated (4 month!) response from Transport Planning signed (illegible) on behalf of Cr. Forge. Residents should carefully note the range of ‘excuses’ for doing absolutely nothing and the validity/credibility of such responses. In particular:
- Opening paragraph does not address the issue at all, although it does emphasise the importance of ‘safety’ – but this is only relevant it seems for Glen Huntly Rd. and not the side streets leading off the arterial road.
- There is no quantification of anything. The inclusion of the phrase ‘even if an increase in traffic volume’ is remarkable. In other words, Council has got absolutely no idea about the impact of their decision making. Further, exactly what does ‘relatively low’ mean? Relative to what?
- What does ‘based on current conditions’ mean? Is the classification of Rowan St. at 421st on the ‘priority list’ the figure determined PRIOR to the introduction of the 40k zone in Glen Huntly Rd, or following the introduction of this speed limit?
- It’s extremely kind of council to reiterate what the current speed laws and limits are – but the conclusion that there are ‘no plans’ to do anything certainly does not follow logically from this opening sentence. Further, just because the ‘vast majority’ of cars are travelling below the legal speed limit, means that a sizeable minority ARE NOT and therefore constitute a safety issue.
- The offer of a ‘detection trailer’ is indeed magnanimous, but what does it achieve? Has council ever bothered to find out whether these trailers in fact achieve their stated objective? Do they result in decreased speed limits? Where is the evidence?
- The removal of two concrete lids is irrelevant to the complaint. Is this supposed to suggest ‘hey look, we’re at least doing something’? All it’s confirming is that the concrete lids have been smashed time and time again so council are now finally not relying on concrete but attempting some remedial and long overdue action. But it’s got nothing to do with the central issue and nor has ‘road patching’. In fact, perhaps the best solution to this problem would be do nothing – if the road isn’t patched and is full of pot holes this could well be the most effective deterrent for both speeding traffic and traffic in general. Surely such an idea should appeal to a ‘do nothing’ council!
Glen Eira Debates 
March 6, 2012 at 8:32 AM
The answer to how useful the speed trailer is can be found in Council’s outdated and arrogantly worded Road Safety Strategy which states that “the Council speed trailer probably has very limited impact in terms of reducing crashes however it clearly is valued by residents and given the low cost of this service it is recommended it be continued”. (i.e. it does nothing but it is useful for fobbing off residents and appearing to do something while doing nothing).
This same strategy, talks of local streets and the importance spending money where casualty crashes have occurred (accepted standard seems to be 3 and focuses attention on main or arterial roads) rather than “throwing money at what is perceived to be “a problem”. So residents with “percevided problems” should perhaps think of sacrificing three of their own so that they can get Council’s attention. However, If they choose this option they should be aware that,
1. Council, even when given details of the accident and the attending police station, will delay adding the street to the priority list for almost a year. Council only uses stats from the VicRoads Crash data base which is 9-12 months out of date.
2. Council only budgets for 4-5 local street traffic calming treatments per year. So another delay. Why only budget for 4-5? Who knows – Council sets their own budget, it’s entirely in their hands, yet for some reason having 421 streets on a list is continually ignored.
If you think I’m p*issed at Council’s utter failure to address safety issues in local streets you’d be spot on – my street is 394 on the list.
I’d be willing to join any one, with the necessary tools and a ute, to do a clandestine raid on the McKinnon Road speed humps so that they could be redistributed elsewhere in the municipality.
March 6, 2012 at 10:01 AM
The real story here is not traffic
It is the 4 month delay in reply
Residents are getting what they deserve with car problems, “you cannot have your cake and eat ” Traffic is almost everyone’s fault, most people do not want to stop driving. Control measures are band-aids, there is no lasting solution in that dead end thinking of that calibre
Delays of months in responding to residents happens all the time in Glen Eira. Mostly you only get a reply if you follow though. The respondent rarely addresses the issues and is often submissive or arrogant usually a mixture of both.
This entrenched behaviour is against the charter and indicative of the leadership that should be setting better standards.
March 6, 2012 at 10:30 AM
I couldn’t have any sympathy with this letter writer, until I knew who the supported at the last local election, they may have voted for Forge or Lipshutz, in that case they are getting what they voted for. In other words they are part of the problem not part of the solution.
It interesting how people want traffic control in their street, but still reserve the right for themselves to driver everywhere else, Main road and free-way edge dwellers are just some subclass resident
Almost every solution to any problem in NIMBY LAND Glen Eira is to move that problem to somewhere else
Hypocrisy and self interest is a rampart disease in middle Australia 2012, this blog should be treating this illness, not irritating it
March 6, 2012 at 11:08 AM
You’re not seeing the big picture. Sure people have cars and that will never stop. Families can have 3 or 4 cars per each residence. What needs to happen if this council is fair dinkum about parking and useable bike lanes is to make sure that each new development has sufficient on site parking. That’s where the trouble lies. Each new multi block of units invariably has car parking waived. When you cram in 20 or 30 units into one suburban block you also create traffic mayhem. It all goes back to slip shod, pro development planning. Start and finish with the planning scheme. That’s what needs a real kick up the arse.
March 6, 2012 at 12:25 PM
Macca your wrong, “creating traffic mayhem”, that present tense, traffic mayhem is already here, although mayhem maybe an over statement
What we have is heavy peak-periods, with constant flowing traffic in-between Bad snarls at rail crossings and for other reasons like accidents and road-works
It going to get worse because of growth, government will not do anything because they are committed to the growth model of economics, which basically means do not interfere with anything that curtails growth
1 car, 2 car, 3 car, 4, it jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs, they do not worry about the true impacts of the model, the costs to health the environment are all put on the never never, and even that has cracks in it, which are being aggressively denied.
One rural town has suffered major 7 floods in 18 months, and similar events are happening all down and across the eastern states. Meaning more people will be picking up the there lives and heading for the big cities in the hope of work
If we were to pay the true costs of what we do, what we consume, the story outside your door would be very different and I think better for it
Don’t keep criticizing the low level bureaucrats as they have no idea what to do, except join the growth model as it the only model on offer
If you think something is wrong, go to the root of the cause and try and change it. Many people are trying this, but more are needed
March 6, 2012 at 12:54 PM
Hi Macca
This link and talk on TED is what I trying to convey, this guy sums it up better than I
Maybe the moderator could activate the link
March 6, 2012 at 2:41 PM
To be accurate, Council’s Road Safety Strategy focuses on casualty accidents, which are the ones they have statistics for. The report did call for a lowering of speed limits along some roads in shopping centres, and Koornang Rd in Carnegie for example has a 40kmh speed limit during 8am-6pm. [Odd that traffic consultants called as expert witnesses don’t know much about the area they’re pontificating on.] The report identified a bunch of accidents in and around Urban Villages where there made no recommendation about reducing speed limits, apparently because fewer of them involved pedestrians.
One of the troubles of having reports prepared by people who don’t know an area is that their analysis is done at a syntactic rather than a semantic level. The table of accident hot spots shows Princes Hwy/Darling Rd separately to Princes Hwy/Koornang Rd. Its the one and the same intersection, but means the intersection is not at the top of the list [12 + 12 = 24].
Council’s letter re Rowan St doesn’t disclose its classification in terms of Clause 56.06 Table C1. The Strategy doesn’t identify it as a Collector Street Level 1, and Access Street Level 2 sounds appropriate e.g. 2000-3000vpd, 40kpm target speed, 7m-7.5m carriageway width. At least Council admits operating speed is higher than target, which probably reflects that actual width is around 9m.
I agree that resources need to be prioritized, but would prefer to see Council being more forthcoming with information about how prioritization is done, who did it, what information its based on etc. We’ve seen how political priorities can be–and how flexible they can become.
March 6, 2012 at 4:51 PM
Reprobate your dreaming for a engineering solution and there is not going to be one, the sooner you realise that the sooner you can move-on a see the problem for what it is.
The Titanic was an engineering solution. were big and new and nothing can stop us “full steam ahead” in retrospect nothing except a block of ice.
Reprobate your smart but your dumb at the same time.