By CASEY NEILL
LOWERED boom gates on Heatherton Road in Noble Park are not an unusual sight.
And neither is an emergency services vehicle caught in the gridlock that ensues, councillor Roz Blades told the Journal last Wednesday.
She’d just watched in horror as an ambulance with lights and sirens in action stopped for a train to pass.
“So that’s someone’s life. Lives are at stake here,” she said.
“I saw it last week with a fire truck.”
Cr Blades said the issue required urgent action.
“This is 10.30am in the morning. At 4pm you can’t move in Noble Park at all,” she said.
Ambulance Employees Australia’s Victorian secretary Steve McGhie said paramedics regularly encountered boom gates impeding their path.
“While we continue to have level crossing booms gates it will continue to delay response times to life-threatening situations,” he said.
Mr McGhie said urgent grade separations would be money well spent.
“Trying to replace level crossings with other alternatives is a costly exercise,” he said.
“But we would say there’s no greater cost than a loss of life.”
On 7 March the State Government announced cash to remove four level crossings and planning and preconstruction funding for future removal for five more, including those at Corrigan, Heatherton and Chandler roads in Noble Park.
“Planning and pre-construction work to remove the Heatherton Road level crossings will make this project ‘shovel-ready’ once funding becomes available,” a spokesperson for Roads Minister Terry Mulder said.
Late last year Opposition leader Daniel Andrews said that these three crossings plus another two in Greater Dandenong were among the top 50 to be removed by 2022 under Project 10,000.
