Our hard won curfews are unfortunately being blatantly ignored, with hundreds of truck drivers using local streets at nights, weekends and during school crossing times. Truck curfews are the only tangible measure implemented in the past 22 years that actually limits trucks on residential streets. They are designed to give relief to residents at night and weekends and to keep trucks away from our kids travelling to and from school.
In just two hours on a recent Sunday, MTAG captured video footage on Francis St Yarraville showing 95 container trucks blatantly ignoring the weekend truck curfew. We know the curfews on Somerville Rd and Moore St are being similarly ignored.
Channel Nine News covered the story which featured Minister Steve Dimopolous saying “we have hefty penalties for motorists who do the wrong thing”. But how many of these curfew breaking truck drivers have received a hefty penalty? The answer is zero.
The StarWeekly also covered the curfew failure story.
If the government can’t enforce a few part time curfews now, how can we have any faith they will manage to enforce 24/7 bans on many more roads once the West Gate Tunnel opens?
We are calling on State Government to commit to the funding and roll out of electronic curfew monitoring for day one of the West Gate Tunnel Project (WGTP) opening in late 2025.
The State Government has consistently said the WGTP will get 9000 trucks per day off local roads. This will be done through the promised 24/7 truck bans on six roads – Blackshaws Rd, Hudsons Rd, Francis St, Sommerville Rd, Buckley St and Moore St.
This promise can only be achieved with electronic monitoring and enforcement. The current ad hoc curfew monitoring by the NHVR (National Heavy Vehicle Regulator) is an ineffective and broken system that relies on humans in patrol cars to be on the ground. This method of enforcement should be a relic of the past, not one that will be used on a modern $10.8B road project. The NHVR is clearly not up to the job of enforcement that they are mandated to deliver.
The government is currently running a traffic camera trial on two roads. The trial can not issue fines and has made no difference to the number of curfew breakers. The publicly available data from the trial shows hundreds of curfew breakers happening each day without any consequences. Legislative changes to the Roads Act are needed to allow camera issued fines but these changes are yet to happen.
Now is the time to demand that the State Government fully commits to proper effective electronic monitoring to ensure it’s ready for the tunnel opening. The government is finalising budgets right now in the lead up to the May budget which determines what will be funded in the following year.
With the West Gate Tunnel being tolled, there is a real risk that the project will make the truck problem on our streets even worse. Please sign our petition and don’t let the promised bans become a broken promise.
Source: MTAG (reposting in support of this important initiatve)
