Sand Road safety call

By Jade Lawton
LONGWARRY residents have launched a campaign for safety upgrades to the Sand Road and Princes Highway intersection, which has seen 13 collisions in the past five years.
Longwarry Progress Association Secretary Iris Andrews said cars exiting a BP Service Station had magnified the intersection’s poor design, with motorists forced to enter and exit the highway without a slip lane and cross oncoming traffic to access Sand Road.
The association has launched a petition calling for upgrades, ideally an overpass, which will be presented to Parliament next month.
“It’s not just what I’m experiencing – there have been terrible accidents there. It is so badly designed; cars don’t give way to oncoming traffic and it’s just an accident waiting to happen,” Ms Andrews said. “Sometimes the B-Double trucks are too big to negotiate the centre island and have their back hanging in to the freeway.”
Ms Andrews said the intersection received high traffic through service station customers, locals and motorists taking a shortcut from the South Gippsland Highway.
And traffic on Sand Road, which has a speed limit of 100 km/h, will soon increase further, with several new housing estates and an industrial estate in the pipeline for Longwarry.
“There are stop signs (for motorists exiting the service station) but they just don’t expect cars to be coming down Sand Road at 100 km/h. They start making silly mistakes and take terrible risks,” Ms Andrews said.
Ms Andrews said the campaign had the support of local politicians and Longwarry’s BP service stations, with the stations on both sides of the highway stocking the petition for customers to sign.
Bass Coast Council Communications Co-ordinator Sharon Coffey said the intersection was of ongoing concern to the council, with some council staff meeting senior VicRoads officers at the site two weeks ago to again push for safety improvements.
“The best solution is to construct a grade separated interchange at this location, however VicRoads advised that funding for this is unlikely to be available in the short to medium term,” she said.
VicRoads Acting Regional Director Harvey Dinelli said that while six of the 13 smashes were serious, a VicRoads proposal for a grade separated interchange at the intersection was yet to receive funding. “The grade separated interchange at the intersection will be considered for funding under future road programs,” he said. “In the short-term VicRoads is investigating other road safety options for the intersection.”
Ms Andrews urged all local residents and motorists who used the Princes Highway to sign the petition.
The petition is available in Longwarry, Bunyip, Garfield, Jindivick and Neerim South, as well as at the BP service stations.