Residents dirty over ‘quagmire’

By Paul Dunlop
A RESIDENTIAL street on the outskirts of Pakenham has been claimed to be barely fit to drive on.
People living in Ryan Road are dirty about its state. They say their road is in its worst ever condition this winter.
Recent rain and an increase of the number of heavy vehicles using the gravel road had turned it into a quagmire, residents said.
Despite Cardinia Shire recently grading the road and erecting signs to alert motorists to its poor condition, residents believe not enough has been done.
“It’s pure mud at the moment,” resident Allison Cuciniello said.
“The council has put warning signs up, but the attitude seems to be ‘bad luck, drive slowly, there’s nothing we can do about it’.”
Ryan Road families gathered recently to express concern about its state. Longtime resident Heather Shallard also raised the state of the road as an issue during public question time at last week’s council meeting.
Mrs Shallard said the road was notorious for its corrugations and potholes.
She said the 40 kilometres per hour speed restriction placed on the area was still too fast.
“It should have been five kilometres per hour. The slippery condition and quagmire make the road nearly impassable,” she said.
Mrs Shallard said that two days after its grading the road was back to its previous condition.
She asked councillors when the shire intended to seal the road, but was told there were no plans in place to do so.
Cardinia Shire’s general manager of assets and development services Michael Ellis said Ryan Road was not currently on the shire’s fiveyear capital works program but added that the situation could be reviewed if council wished.
Mr Ellis said works at nearby Racecourse Road, where traffic lights are being installed, had meant a number of heavy vehicles were using Ryan Road as a ‘back route’.
Mr Ellis said he was confident the situation would improve with the installation of the lights and, later, the completion of the Pakenham Bypass.
In the meantime, he said council was doing what it could to make the area as safe as possible.
Cardinia Shire’s chief executive officer Don Welsh also empathised with residents, saying Ryan Road was an example of the difficulties faced by the council in restoring a road network that had long been neglected under previous council administrations.
Resident Katrina Twist said Ryan Road, which is used by school buses, had almost been reduced to a fourwheeldrive track.
“In summer you bounce all over it, and in winter it gets extremely slippery,” she said. “It’s definitely getting worse and just putting signs up is not fixing it.”