The State government has consistently said the West Gate Tunnel Project will remove 9,000 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, Somerville Rd, Buckley St and Moore St.
This promise can only be achieved with the roll out of electronic monitoring and enforcement. The current ad hoc curfew monitoring by the NHVR (National Heavy Vehicle Regulator), with its head office in Brisbane, is an ineffective and broken method that relies on humans in patrol cars to be on the ground. MTAG recently highlighted this monitoring failure by capturing 95 trucks, on video, breaking the curfew in just a two hour period.
If the state government does not have 24/7 monitoring ready for day one of the Tunnel opening in late 2025, it will fail our community and be a hollow promise.
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 funding and rolling out 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.
Please sign this petition now and let them now we demand that their truck promise does not become a broken promise. If it’s not funded in this budget it will not happen. Act now!
