Crossing push gains support

A DESIGNATED pedestrian crossing on the Calder Highway at Wedderburn would improve community safety, said Sgt Ben Huismann.

The Loddon police chief has backed a move by local residents collecting signatures on a petition that calls for the crossing.

“We definitely need a crossing,” said Sgt Huismann. “If we can prevent injury and death and reduce the road toll and even, better, prevent accidents that’s a good outcome.”

Sgt Huismann said Wedderburn’s main street was a major highway and not ideal for elderly residents and young people to be crossing.

“It’s a wide stretch of road and that means it takes longer to cross. It is quite a danger for elderly people with slower mobility to get across the road with the amount of traffic on the highway.

“The gap gets closed when vehicles are travelling the road and it is easy for people to fall and visibility can be reduced both for pedestrians and vehicles.

“If we could get lighting and flashing lights (for a crossing) that will make the road safer for the community to cross.”

Petition organiser Cheryl Fowler said residents and visitors to Wedderburn were adding their support to the call for a crossing, upgrading the school-hours crossing on High Street. Underground infrastructure for a pedestrian crossing was installed at the site as part of Wedderburn’s streetscape improvement.

Cheryl said copies of the signed petition would be sent to Calder Highway Improvement Committee.

The push for a lower speed limit on the Calder Highway through Inglewood has also been put on the future agenda of CHRIC. The town’s development and tourism committee wants the limit lowered to 40kmh.

500-metre to 1km corridor over the next six weeks, and we will make this information public once we have had the chance to make contact with the owners of land within that zone.”

Ms Falcon said more than 1200 comments had been added to an online pinpoint map.

“We are working to find a route that minimises impacts to agriculture, cultural heritage, communities and the environment. Input from the community and landholders is a critical part of that process. We thank everyone who attended, and plan on conducting more community forums as the project progresses”.

“There was considerable interest in a new report and a series of maps we had on display, which illustrate the important areas of land use across the project area following a study by engineering and environment consultant AECOM.

“The maps provide an insight into the process underway, identifying significant features that will influence the location of the transmission lines. Large maps showed the constraints identified in six key areas - agriculture, ecological values, Aboriginal cultural heritage, flooding, land use and infrastructure and engineering.”

Loddon Mayor Dan Straub said rural communities would miss out on vital tourism dollars after Premier Daniel Andrews pulled Victoria out of hosting the Games.

“The Premier indicated cost was a reason and that more than $2 billion would instead be diverted to social housing, tourism and sporting facilities in regional centres that were to have held Games events,” he said.

“The big regional capitals still get a boost. Unfortunately, it appears rural areas like Loddon have been cast aside. We urgently need a massive injection of funds to fix our roads.

“Rural Victoria could spend the entire $2 billion on roads and still not catch up on repairs, maintenance and upgrades desperately needed to transport freight while also increasing safety of all road users.”

Then-Victorian parliamentary secretary Danielle Green last year said upgrade of Loddon pools could be a legacy of the 2026 Games. No commitments were made for rural areas in the Premier’s announcement.