By Casey Neill
“Why can’t we have two speed bumps?”
For years Liz Robertson has been making the same plea of Greater Dandenong Council for her Springvale South street, Andleon Way.
The 14 November council meeting heard a question from her regarding the issue.
“I’ve been corresponding since 2009 with regards to the closure of Coomoora Road,” she said.
“Complaint after complaint, but it seems the engineers have advised that they monitored the volume of traffic and the speed.
“When we try and reverse into our driveway other vehicles honk their horns at us.
“All I’m after is a couple of speed humps as I live right on the bend from the Springvale side.
“At least this will somehow reduce the speed and give the residents a chance to reverse or drive out of their driveway with confidence.”
Ms Robertson said that her son, husband and daughter had been involved in near-misses with motorists travelling too fast.
“My vehicle was parked on the street at my next door neighbour’s as we were ready to swap cars over as we were going out that night,” she said.
“It was hit by a third party as he sped up and lost control which he hit my car and drove off.
“Lucky we had witnesses that saw the incident.
“There is always cars speeding all round the bend and at one night I got out of bed because the screeching of the tyres woke me up.”
Council engineering services director Julie Reid told the meeting that council officers had been monitoring the vehicle speeds in the area for some time on a regular basis.
“The council has a local area traffic management prioritisation program which includes speed humps,” she said.
“It is used to allocate limited funds available to the locations within the municipality where the greatest road safety risk is identified.
“Each street in the program is assessed based on a variety of engineering factors.
“This includes, but is not limited to, things like vehicle speeds, traffic volumes, state accident records, road geometry, as well as sociological needs.”
Ms Reid said this method of ranking and prioritisation ensured that streets experiencing the most severe traffic conditions were allocated the highest priority for installing traffic management devices when funds became available.
“At this time, Andleon Way does not rank as a high priority for traffic management devices given the current conditions,” she said.
“The latest traffic survey results indicated both the speed and the traffic volumes along this street were comfortably within acceptable levels for the local residential environment.”
Ms Reid said that traffic conditions in the area changed when Coomoora Road was truncated at the Springvale Road intersection.
“This occurred as a direct result of the construction of the Dandenong Bypass in 2012,” she said.
She said that following the Dandenong Bypass opening, the council investigated residents’ concerns relating to increased traffic on Andleon Way.
In 2014, Ms Reid said, the council secured VicRoads funding to install a ‘change in priority T-intersection’ at Coomoora Road and Northgate Drive.
“By changing the priority at this intersection, more traffic is encouraged to use Northgate Drive and Paterson Road to enter and exit the estate instead of using Andleon Way,” she said.
“The council has been monitoring traffic volumes and vehicle speeds along Andleon Way and collected data both before and after these changes were implemented to determine if the treatment is achieving the desired outcomes.
“The latest traffic survey results indicated both the speed and the traffic volumes on Andleon Way were comfortably within acceptable levels for the local residential environment.”
