A WESTERN Suburbs MP is demanding an inquiry into the impact of freight trucks on residential streets, including the thousands of trucks travelling daily through Melbourne’s inner-west.
Greens MP Colleen Hartland will call on State Parliament to launch an inquiry into alternatives for moving freight, with truck numbers tipped to more than double — from 290,000 at present to 690,000 trips a day by 2046.
The push comes as documents released under a freedom of information request reveal the much-touted east-west link is aimed more at cars than at taking truck traffic and freight off residential streets.
Ms Hartland said local streets could not sustain the expected doubling in freight volume from 2.5 million containers a year to more than five million by 2025.
“Despite this looming truck problem, we’ve seen no action from the Baillieu government in their two years,” she said. “The government has failed to come up with a freight strategy or a rail freight target, and the West Gate ramps truck bypass project remains ‘under review’,” she said.
“We’re seeing the number of trucks on our streets increasing rapidly, and more trucks means more crashes, more damage to roads, more air pollution and more traffic congestion.”
Victorian Greens leader Greg Barber said proposal summaries describing the east-west link, prepared by the government for a funding submission to Infrastructure Australia and released on an FOI request, failed to outline plans to put freight on rail. The summaries make no mention of the Truck Action Plan announced by the previous Labor government.
“The tollway is aimed at cars, not trucks or freight. It will not get trucks off residential streets,” Mr Barber said.
Maribyrnong Truck Action Group spokesman Peter Knight welcomed the call for an inquiry. He said residents had been left to fight for solutions in the face of “a wall of indifference” from the government and bureaucrats.
“VicRoads has no energy, no ideas, no imagination and no goodwill. This has never been about an either/or solution. We need the freeway ramps regardless of what else they do.”
Mr Knight described the joint Maribyrnong Council-VicRoads review of night and weekend curfews as “a complete waste of time” with no will for change from anyone but the council and residents. Roads Minister Terry Mulder did not respond to requests for comment.
