My adjournment is to the Minister for Roads and Road Safety. I ask the minister to facilitate a meeting between her office, the Department of Transport and Planning (DTP) and local stakeholders to discuss traffic safety concerns in Thornbury raised through a parliamentary petition.
I was pleased to sponsor petition 202522, which was tabled in the Assembly with the support of 720 local residents. It focuses on two key intersections: Darebin Road at Wilmoth Street and Station Street at Collins Street. These are not quiet backstreets; they are highly active, heavily used intersections that form part of the daily routine for students at Thornbury High School, their families and the many pedestrians, cyclists, bus users and motorists who move through this area each day.
At peak times they carry a lot, and people have raised concerns about traffic flows, turning movements, speed limits, safety around the bus stops and how it feels to cross. The petition reflects a strong community desire for careful, evidence-based assessments and practical recommendations to improve safety.
Beyond that, residents want the opportunity to share local knowledge about how these areas are used and experienced.
Road safety is vitally important to us in the inner north. Our suburbs carry significant movement, with multiple tram and train lines, major arterial roads and growing density.
We are doing some serious heavy lifting when it comes to moving people in and out of the city each day. We have seen the benefits of decisive road safety reforms like removing dangerous and congested level crossings in Preston. More recently we have reduced the speed limit from 70 to 60 kilometres an hour on a hazardous 3-kilometre stretch of St Georges Road between Northcote and Preston.
Over a five-year period along this particular section of road there were 80 crashes and 22 people were seriously injured – that is, someone suffering a major injury every three months on a single stretch of road in our community, a crash every three to four weeks.
That is not a status quo we should accept. Reducing the speed will undoubtedly reduce the likelihood and severity of collisions and make the whole area a lot safer, including for the many kinder and school families who have raised this with me.
That same evidence-based approach should guide future decisions about Darebin Road and Station Street.
DTP have already proposed a 40-kilometre-per-hour school speed zone on Station Street during drop-off and pick-up times due to its proximity to Thornbury High School. This will be the most impactful road safety measure we can take, and it is certainly welcome.
Facilitating a meeting between the department, the petition organiser Nina Collins, representatives of Thornbury High, Darebin council and my office would ensure that any future consideration of these intersections is informed by data and lived experience, and I look forward to the minister’s response.
