‘Save our kids’

By Melissa Grant
CONCERNED residents have pleaded with authorities to immediately improve pedestrian safety on McGregor Road, Pakenham, after a car and a 13-year-old boy on a bike collided on Wednesday.
The boy, a Pakenham Secondary College student, was taken to hospital via ambulance about 3.30pm suffering minor injuries, but residents fear a more serious collision will occur unless something is done to make the walk along McGregor Road safer.
Marie Hansen-Nooy, who lives on Livingstone Boulevard, has vowed to campaign until a pedestrian crossing is installed near the railway line on McGregor Road.
“I saw him hit the ground,” she said. “He curled up in a ball and I felt sick. You see kids trying to cross there all the time, especially near the railway. There are just too many cars and too many innocent kids.”
Pakenham Secondary College Principal Ray Squires said the school community was concerned about pedestrian safety on McGregor Road.
He said some students were crossing it twice to access the designated pedestrian railway crossing near Henty Road.
Nola Kemp, secretary of the Heritage Springs’ resident group, said it was also a concern that some people didn’t use that pedestrian crossing.
“My partner saw a little boy on a bike who almost got hit by a train,” she said.
Pakenham mother Jennifer Phillips called on authorities to make the walk along McGregor Road safer in May 2008 after her son Harry, then aged 5, was hit by a car on Cunningham Crescent.
At the time, a Cardinia Shire spokesman said the council would continue to advocate to VicRoads for a pedestrian crossing between the railway line and Princes Highway, even though traffic counts didn’t meet VicRoads standards for one.
Barry Hodge, a member of the Heritage Springs’ residents group, said residents had been lobbying for a new pedestrian crossing and rail crossing for 12 months.
“We want to call a meeting to get VicRoads, VicTrack and the council to do something,” he said. “People seem to be doing a lot of talk but nothing’s happening.”
A VicTrack spokesman said road authorities were responsible for the installation of new pedestrian crossings and that the upgrade program only included existing pedestrian crossings.
“VicTrack has offered to assist the Cardinia Shire Council to project manage and deliver the widening of the level crossing at McGregor Road, to upgrade the existing pedestrian crossing on the east side and to install a new pedestrian crossing on the western side,” he said.
Cardinia Shire spokesman Paul Dunlop said the council had engaged VicTrack to act as project managers to upgrade the rail crossing as part of stage two of the McGregor Road duplication project.
Mr Dunlop said pedestrian crossings, with boomgates, were proposed on both sides of the road to ensure people could safely cross the railway line. The council has set aside $400,000 in its 2009–10 capital works program to design stage two of the duplication, and construction was expected to start next financial year, he said.
But Mrs Hansen-Nooy said that was too late.
“It needs to be done ASAP,” she said. “Looking at the photos we can’t wait a month, we can’t wait six months.”
VicRoads failed to respond to inquiries before the Gazette went to press.