We’ve repeatedly stated that where there’s a will, there’s a way. This is abundantly clear when it comes to traffic management, road safety, and parking innovation. Glen Eira’s approach has been, and remains, ad hoc and ineffective. We present below how other councils approach these issues and how they actually PLAN, fund, and develop strategies to deal with 21st century dilemmas. We ask readers to compare this approach to what our administrators and councillors come up with.
Such comparisons are even more important given that today’s Melbourne Bayside Weekly features a news clip stating that Council is ‘advocating’ to the State Government for action on Carnegie Station since “long delays and associated traffic congestion may hamper a retail development being built north of the line.”!!!! Good to see that Council has its priorities right! More to the point, this identical “advocacy” features on Council’s homepage which hasn’t been updated since October 2008!
In stark contrast we present two documents: a Media Release and a Municipal Parking Strategy (uploaded here) from Moonee Valley Council.
Media Release
Wednesday, 16 May 2012
Plan in place to review traffic and parking around the city
Last night, Moonee Valley Councillors adopted a long term plan to review and improve parking across the municipality.
The plan involves dividing the municipality up into 22 Local Area Traffic Management (LATM) precincts and rolling out a timeline of scheduled reviews for each one.
Moonee Valley Mayor Cr Jim Cusack said the LATM precincts were identified a few years ago.“Last year we incorporated them into our new Municipal Parking Strategy,” Cr Cusack said. “The Municipal Parking Strategy (MPS) adopted late last year provides a set of tools to effectively manage traffic and parking around the city now and in the future.
“The inclusion of the LATM precincts in the MPS will allow Council to develop a more strategic and proactive approach to managing traffic and parking in Moonee Valley.“Council is taking a local area approach when it comes to traffic and parking in order to help coordinate and integrate parking initiatives around the city.
“The use of LATM precincts allows Council to address specific neighbourhood needs, whilst keeping an eye on the wider parking and traffic trends and issues across the municipality such as through traffic. It also enables Council to have a systematic approach to particular traffic and parking challenges such as school zones, encourage parking demand to be spread throughout an area and plan for capital works associated with traffic and parking improvements more strategically.”
“Moonee Valley is a city in transition. As Melbourne grows, our population continues to increase and the level of usage of our road network changes. We want to meet local needs and also take into consideration the wider community and help our residents, workers and visitors move towards more sustainable travel practices.”
Portfolio holder for Traffic and Transportation Planning Cr Narelle Sharpe said Council decided to review two LATM precincts per financial year.“The review of each LATM precinct is a lengthy process as it entails traffic and parking analysis as well as consultation with the local community,” said Cr Sharpe. “With 22 LATM precincts, we needed a set of criteria to help us prioritise the review and implementation program of each area.
“The ranking system we adopted reflects our focus on safety. It is based on numerous criteria ranging from resident and community concerns, traffic volumes, traffic speed and accidents, to more proactive criteria such as the number of activity centres and number of facilities that generate a lot of pedestrian and car traffic like railway stations, schools and community centres.
“To ensure the ranking is fair, we adopted a weighting system so that LATM precincts with a larger number of streets are not artificially advantaged.
“The Fletcher and Newmarket LATM precincts were identified as the highest priority precincts and therefore will be the ones Council will review first.
“Traffic management projects have already been developed for the 2012/13 financial year and we will work towards completing these as soon as the budget is finalised and approved.”
A map of the LATM precincts as well as details of the criteria used, the weighting system and scores of each Precinct are available on request.”
Glen Eira Debates 
June 25, 2012 at 1:23 PM
Impressive stuff from Moonee Valley. The policy itself is over 130 pages. All Glen Eira manages for two policies is about 60 pages together and half of these are filled with publicity and population figures that don’t say a damn thing and for sure don’t look at all the components of areas like the Moonee Valley ones do.
June 25, 2012 at 1:42 PM
All Glen Eira gets is a budget for 4 damn ugly traffic cushions. Really shows how interested this Council is in residents safety.
June 25, 2012 at 2:07 PM
Kev, the budget does extend further for overall traffic management. We would however, query whether the funding available for Local Area Traffic Management is sufficient and how well these funds are expended and how “innovative” Council really is. For example, is it really “cost effective” to create roundabouts and then expend $50,000 on fake grass so that they look nice?
June 25, 2012 at 4:04 PM
You are right Glen Eira – the budget does extend further but that funding focuses on main and arterial roads (most of which are VicRoads responsibility, they re-imburse Glen Eira for the work – do you get where the funds come from?). Money spent on these roads (widening footpaths, lights, splitter islands etc) causes traffic to flow to local residential streets (rat runs). Yet Council’s spending on local residential streets remains woefully inadequate.
Oh and by the way, applying “ïnnovative” and “cost effective” to this Council has me laughing my head off!!!
June 25, 2012 at 5:00 PM
Latest news from the MRC Caulfield Village website – “With the Approval of the Caulfield Village Planning Scheme Amendment by the Hon Minister Matthew Guy on the 28th June 2011, and in keeping with the Club’s commitment to keep the Local Community informed. The Club will again be hosting a Community Information Session, the date for which will be announced shortly”
Mmmmm 12 months on and nothing. Maybe I can start paying my rates “shortly” and see if Glen Eira Council is so accepting of that.
June 25, 2012 at 5:16 PM
“shortly” the MRC will stop receiving their subsidized rates and start paying their fair share like other rate payers.
June 25, 2012 at 6:46 PM
Moonee Valley’s got the same issues with their racecourse and high rise development. Wonder how they’ll handle traffic compared to our lot. Betyas it won’t be the sell out that Hyams Lipshutz Pilling and Esakoff agreed to.
June 25, 2012 at 5:23 PM
Ad hoc is the exact phrase to describe what happens in Glen Eira in all areas be it planning or traffic. Now that there’s a 40k speed limit in Centre Rd the traffic will dart through all the side streets to avoid the bottlenecks that trains and traffic create along there. I’ve no doubt that no research or consideration was given to what will happen to all these side streets before the 40k was introduced. It just sounded good and tough luck for all those people living in the side streets. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that introducing 40k is bad. What I am saying is that it’s crazy just to look at one street without thinking about the overall impact on neighbouring areas. From reading this, it sounds like Moonee Valley has gone about it the right way. First you do the research, then the planning and costing and then you implement. The total opposite of what happens in Glen Eira I would think.
June 25, 2012 at 8:27 PM
A holistic and integrated approach to transport management seems beyond the scope of Glen Eira (but not other innovative Councils). The speed reduction in Centre Road is sensible yet, there has been no change to traffic management on the surrounding residential streets. Why oh why does the council place a greater value on thoroughfares for through movement of traffic than our residential streets? Space that should be for residential traffic that should be safe for our community to interact on and our children to play on. The latter would be a death wish in the current environment.
Glen Eira has their priorities totally skewed!
June 25, 2012 at 11:00 PM
Priorities are skewed and consequently so is funding. I drove through the corner of Glen Huntly and Kooyong Rd today. It was an absolute disaster taking three changes of lights to get across one intersection. The reason was that for at least the past week council has been tearing up the footpath along Kooyong Rd in order to replace it with their bitumen and patterned red brick.
I know this section of road very well. There was nothing wrong with the footpath. It does not need to be replaced. Instead of spending countless amounts on such needless works all over the city I’d argue that residents would be far better off if the money would be spent on reducing the yearly rate increase. I also have my doubts whether much consideration was given to the impact of such road works on traffic, much less the retailers all throughout Glen Eira who have had to suffer disruptions to their business and trade. Yes, fix footpaths – but only when they need to be fixed. Don’t just rip up perfectly good roads because someone had the brainwave of insisting that every street, every park, and every shopping centre has to look the same. This is total madness.
June 25, 2012 at 11:33 PM
Such great suggestions from Anonymous folks. Why not state your name and address and direct your concern to one of the Councillors?
June 25, 2012 at 11:48 PM
Where have you been living Tracey? Councillors know damn well what the issues are. They’ve just had 6 community forums where residents told them in no uncertain terms to get their act together on traffic and planning. The results are the community plan and the council plan both of which do bugger all. They don’t listen. That’s the problem that will be solved in October when they’re voted out on their arses. Next to go will be your mates Newton and Burke.
June 26, 2012 at 6:48 AM
Why bother? This Council will not act on your suggestions. Just look at C60 and the Racecourse agreement. As part of C60 being approved, an agreement was made between the MRC and Councillors Hyams, Lipshutz, Esakoff and Pilling on certain improvements to be made to the centre of the racecourse by 27 April 2012. Two months after it was all supposed to be implemented, nothing has happened. Nothing. You would think the Hyams now as Mayor would do something about it. No, couldn’t care less. And so maybe “Tracey M ” this might give you some insight why people shouldn’t bother with this current Council and wait out until October when we can get some real leaders on Council who follow through and assist the community.
June 26, 2012 at 1:51 AM
Tracey .M., In normal circumstances people would include their name but not in Glen Eira as sometimes we are declared vexatious or at the very least the answers are always prejudiced according to who makes the complaint.
All letters are usually ignored.
I KNOW SOMEONE WHO HAS WRITTEN TO COUNCIL THREE TIMES ABOUT A DANGEROUS FOOTPATH WHICH HAS BEEN BLOCKED BY THE BUILDER AND IS NOW IN SUCH A BAD STATE THAT YOU NEED RUBBER BOOTS TO TRAVERSE IT IF YOU CARE FOR YOUR OFFICE SHOES OR OFFICE CLOTHES?
Tracey, the GEC Councillors and municipal officers usually always drive so they only have to avoid the pedestrians who take to the road in Eskdale Road when trying to make a journey to and from their home and being responsible citizens they are coming or going to the train.
Tracey eally what does it matter who makes the statement if it is a truthful statement anyway?
June 26, 2012 at 8:05 AM
I live two streets away from a train station, about two years ago the folks in the first street were fed up with not being able to park in their street so they fought with Council to get restricted parking in their street (yes, they had to fight Council – Council did not want to do anything). Well guess what, now my street is chock a block with commuter cars and residents in my street are now fighting Council.
When eventually we get restricted in our street, guess what will happen to the third street. Doesn’t take an Einstein!!! No doubt they will have to fight Council too.
The total ignoring of flow on impacts and obstructive attitude of the Glen Eira Traffic Department is truly pathetic. As for the Councillor’s themselves – they have been equally pathetic in representing our street.
June 26, 2012 at 8:18 AM
bit strange the spikes are now exposed on the old fence on Queens Avenue. Wasn’t this the reason why they couldn’t replace with the pallaside because jockeys would be impaled. Well it looks like they can now so it must have been the expense of replacing the fence was the real reason for not doing it.
June 26, 2012 at 11:36 AM
Worksafe and the MRC aren’t intested in Jockeys. Now if Black Caviar was to get impaled, then that would be news.
June 26, 2012 at 12:37 PM
yes it would be news as BC is a great Australian according to the media. Helping some rich people getting richer in a minority sport.
June 26, 2012 at 12:10 PM
The difference between Glen Eira and other councils is that others get off their backsides and are pro-active. Newton and his mob are reactive. They only do what is legally and minimally required. Most of the time it’s patch-up stuff to quell residents outrage or to avert some risk resulting from a complaint. That’s probably okay to some extent, but not when you’re meant to provide leadership and vision for the next decade as the community plan is supposed to. Moonee Valley sees the looming disasters and has done something about it. Glen Eira relies on what it’s always done and that’s based on stuff that is so old that it was out of date the moment it was published.
June 26, 2012 at 10:49 PM
When the vegetation along Queens Ave grew out of control, Andrew Newton’s instinctive reaction was to put barriers at each end, to force pedestrians onto the roadway. Pure genius.