UPDATE: Weary residents will stage a “sleep-in” on a busy Footscray truck route in a bid to win night-time curfews.
Residents in sleeping bags and blankets will occupy Moore Street from 8am-8.30am on April 2 to protest against the 400 per cent increase in overnight truck traffic since 2006.
Nearby resident Scott Adams said he and his young family struggled to sleep because of heavy truck traffic in the area.
“We desperately need night-time curfews,” he said. “We’ve got trucks barrelling down the hill at 60km/h, then using engine brakes to slow up for the lights. I really do worry about how long we can put up with this.”
Mr Adams said the protest would block all Moore Street traffic between Hopkins and Donald streets to symbolically reclaim sleep robbed by trucks avoiding CityLink tolls as they access the port.
Night-time truck traffic on Moore Street is five times heavier than in 2006 and 24-hour truck movements have more than doubled in that time to more than 2600 per day.
Maribyrnong council has lobbied the state government to introduce a curfew on Moore Street similar to the Yarraville night and weekend truck curfews introduced in 2001.
Maribyrnong Truck Action Group president Samantha McArthur said trucks were using inner-west residential streets that were not designed or intended for such heavy truck traffic.
“Residents are basically subsidising Victoria’s freight task with their health and safety. This has to change.”
Ms McArthur said there was nothing to address problems around truck traffic associated with the port expansion other than “a pie-in-the-sky tunnel that will never get built”. “What the Premier needs to realise is that something needs to be done now – not in 15 years.”
She said the “slumber party”-style protest was being held in consultation with Victoria Police. The protest follows a recent “open house” at Maribyrnong town hall in which senior staff and executives from the EPA, VicRoads, Department of Health and Maribyrnong council met with residents.
VicRoads chief operating officer Peter Todd said Moore Street stood out as an issue and conceded solutions must be found.
Victorian Transport Association chief executive Neil Chambers said the protest will have a major impact on the Maribyrnong community as well as the trucking industry.
“This is not a way to build stakeholder relationships, we have always said with this type of protest, why disadvantage your own constituents?”
Mr Chambers said industry has long existed in the inner-west and businesses will continue to need truck access to the road network.
