Bottleneck barney

By Jade Lawton
A POLITICAL bun fight has erupted over Berwick’s Clyde Road bottleneck, with fingers being pointed at both State and Federal Bureaucrats.
The former ALP candidate for La Trobe, Greg Pargeter, this week criticised La Trobe MP Jason Wood for voting in Parliament this month against funding for the Clyde Road duplication.
The road, which serves as an entrance to Berwick Village and access road for Monash University, Chisholm Institute, Casey Hospital and Beaconhills College, is an RACV-recognised bottleneck used by more than 27,000 people daily – a figure sure to climb when Nossal High School opens on the Monash Campus next year.
“As motorists once again sit frustrated in their vehicles caught in gridlock for kilometres on Clyde Road, they should consider why Mr Wood has sided with his Liberal and National Party colleagues and abandoned the obvious needs of his constituents,” Mr Pargeter said.
“The families and businesses of La Trobe need to know who Mr Wood serves when he claims to support the Clyde Road upgrade when in La Trobe yet votes against it in Canberra.”
Mr Pargeter said he might seek pre-selection for the La Trobe electorate in the next election.
But Mr Wood said “dragging out” Mr Pargeter was a political stunt.
The vote was against a name change, he said, with the ALP moving to change the coalition-founded AusLink to the Nation Building Program.
“It not only means all the signs have to be changed. They’ve put this on the national highway program with no mention of regional areas, and they’ve wrapped the black spot funding in with Clyde Road – they are trying to force members against road funding,” he said.
“Clyde Road is being politicised and rather than the government funding Clyde Road, they are trying to find stalling tactics.”
Mr Wood said in Parliament on 3 June that Labor committed $30 million to Clyde Road and $140 million to Springvale Road upgrades at the same time, and that Springvale Road was almost underway.
“It appears that one is going ahead because it is in a Labor member’s electorate and the other, because it is in my seat of La Trobe, is not being funded,” he said.
The State Government announced $1 million to investigate duplicating Clyde Road in last year’s Victorian Transport Plan and $828,000 in works are now underway, adding a right-turn lane with an arrow and left-turn slip lane from Clyde Road to Kangan Drive.
Eastern Victoria MP Edward O’Donohue last week said the changes were welcome but said they did not tackle the larger issues of duplication and railway grade separation.