Road rage, council style
Road rage Baw Baw Shire style has taken off already rearing its head across many parts of the shire.
The condition of roads, especially rural roads, has riled many property owners. If it wasn’t so serious it might be funny. Such as watching vehicles try to wend their way along the Baw Baw Shire section of North Yannathan Rd at Modella, a road described by Cr Keith Cook after travelling there last Tuesday as “a shocker”.
“I couldn’t believe it and I’ve seen some bad ones,” he commented later to The Gazette.
The potholes were so deep and all over the place, Cr Cook said.
The chairman of council’s roads and drainage advisory committee Cr Cook said he’d looked at a number of roads whose conditions had generated complaints to the shire.
At North Yannathan Rd he took photographs and made a report but said he was unsure if a major fix can be done in the near future.
The Gazette (photographer and journalist) also drove to North Yannathan Rd last week, the car bouncing and bucking its way along the unsealed road to meet and talk with some angry property owners.
But the horrific condition of the surface could not have been better demonstrated than by a car approaching from about 300 metres away.
It stopped numerous times and zigged and zagged continuously taking several minutes to travel the 300 metres.
Behind the wheel was Janis Otterspoor delivering rural mail.
No matter where she zigged and zagged it was impossible to avoid potholes, some of which were about 25 centimetres deep, and that was during daylight.
A rural postie for 13 years, Ms Otterspoor echoed other frustrations aired to The Gazette and said that despite being very careful and travelling at speeds so slow they “probably didn’t even register on the speedometer” the postal vehicles regularly suffered damage.
Some of the (rural) roads around Longwarry have improved over the years, she said, but others have got much worse.
Earlier that day The Gazette had travelled to Thornell Rd to the north of Longwarry responding to a plea from resident Jade Smith.
Ms Smith doesn’t live in Thornell Rd but near its junction with Corduroy Rd.
She travels to Cranbourne for work and now detours an extra nine kilometres a day through Longwarry to avoid Thornell Rd and damage to her car.
The road that runs between Sand and Corduroy Rds is only about one kilometre long but for most of the distance the road surface is badly potholed and corrugated.
Ms Smith and North Yannathan Rd property owners Marj Gould and Greg Osborne said their complaints to the shire over many months had fallen on deaf ears.
North Yannathan Rd runs from the Drouin- Westernport Rd and into Cardinia Shire and is abutted by many rural enterprises.
Mr Osborne, a beef farmer, travels to his property from Drouin daily along the road that he shares with vehicles of others living there, milk tankers, trucks travelling to and from a poultry farm, tractors, other farm machinery and trucks delivering to properties.
He regards it a major safety hazard as well damaging vehicles.
The road was last graded about eight months ago but there was no re-sheeting with gravel, he said.
Ms Gould said she didn’t know long she and her husband would be able to get in and out of their property if the road wasn’t fixed.
What if somebody urgently needed an ambulance?, she pondered.
Written responses to questions by The Gazette attributed to Baw Baw’s director community infrastructure Cohen Van der Velde didn’t indicate any immediate relief for North Yannathan and Thornell Rds or for Weerong Rd in Drouin, the subject of an article in last Tuesday’s Gazette.
“In accordance with its road management plan council undertakes periodic inspections along all of its roads to identify defects and schedule their repair”.
Weerong Rd, that Mr Van der Velde said was inspected in April, is listed for consideration as part of a future road upgrading program but in response to issues raised recently about the road will make a further ad-hoc inspection and program any maintenance works needed.