By Casey Neill
A rail bridge will carry trains over Abbotts Road from 2019.
On Thursday 23 September Dandenong MP Gabrielle Williams announced the design choice and that construction to remove the level crossing would start next year.
“This is a fantastic outcome for the local community and I look forward to work starting next year on the removal of this deadly, congested crossing,” she said.
She said the solution followed extensive consultation on a range of options with local business owners and operators, commuters and landowners.
Ms Williams said local industry indicated a clear preference for a rail bridge over Abbotts Road during the consultation.
“We’ve listened closely to local feedback and found a solution that keep Abbotts Road open and connected to the industrial precinct,” she said.
She said that removing the crossing would reduce congestion and make the area safer.
More than 23,000 vehicles use the intersection every day.
A train derailed after hitting a truck at the intersection in 2012, resulting in one death and several serious injuries.
The incident followed another death at the intersection five years earlier.
The State Government announced last November that the crossing would be gone by 2019.
Committee for Dandenong chairman Gary Castricum welcomed the news, which followed years of campaigning from the group.
He said it would continue to advocate for a road link over the Cranbourne rail line connecting Remington Drive to Pound Road.
But in February this year, the Journal reported that businesses were fuming over plans to cut Abbotts Road in half at the railway crossing – to instead build the Remington Drive overpass.
Level Crossing Removal Authority (LXRA) did not initially put forward any other plans.
But Ms Williams said there were always other options on the table, and two weeks later the LXRA released four additional prospective projects for public consultation.
On 1 April she asked LXRA to prioritise investigations into ‘the Remington Drive option’.
“If it doesn’t stack up, it’s better they take it off the table sooner rather than later so businesses have certainty and so we clear the air for feedback on the other four options,” she said.
On 23 May Ms Williams announced that the option had been taken off the table.
Work is underway to remove the level crossings at Corrigan, Heatherton and Chandler roads in Noble Park.
The South Gippsland Highway crossing is also on the list of 50 to be removed by 2022.
