PARKVILLE ASSOCIATION Relevance to Westgate Tunnel Project Retaining Royal Park

Parkville Association The Parkville Association is a voluntary resident’s group that has represented the residents of Parkville is whatever capacity is required since 1967. This includes addressing issues surrounding traffic, building regulations, heritage matters, amenity and social cohesion. Parkville is a large suburb but is actually mainly parkland – Royal Park. We are part of the City of Melbourne and are the oldest residents group in the city. We were a motivating force behind the application of New Heritage overlays in the inner city which saved the city from wholesale development of some of these inner areas.

Our Position on the Westgate Tunnel Project. We fully endorse the submission, to this committee, of the City of Melbourne. The City of Melbourne has major concerns about the project and its impact on the municipality with which we concur. We understand the possible benefits for port access in the project but this plan goes far beyond that and will have a major negative impacts on the inner city areas of which we are an integral part. Out neighbouring Suburbs of North Melbourne and West Melbourne will suffer major disruption and change and since Parkville lies directly adjacent to North Melbourne there is no avoiding these impacts. We object to the Westgate Tunnel Project (WGTP) for many reasons but primarily the fact that it will result in a significant increase in the traffic and parking problems faced by the suburb of Parkville. There is expected, by all calculations, to be at least an extra 9000 cars per day trafficking through the inner north and west of the city. The main reason for this is an ill informed decision to link the new dual carriageway across to the Dynon road bridge and straight into West Melbourne.This traffic has to go somewhere and we do not believe that there is any capacity for these inner suburbs to absorb this increase. A large proportion will be attempting to move across the inner northwest and there are very few options to do this. The obvious flow on of this traffic will be to a significant degree moving through the few streets in Parkville. The vague claim that there is spare capacity in the system is nonsense.

Our Position – cont. Being an inner suburb of Melbourne makes us very aware of the impact of these projects. The overall impact on the amenity of the area will be quite disturbing. Changes to the Dynon Road area, the Moonee Ponds creek and effects on E-gate and Wurundjeri way will be overwhelmingly negative. The connection of Dynon Road to a new access road through Egate and into a widened Wurundjeri way is frightening. Wasn’t Egate earmarked for other special development? The project is poorly thought through because a significant part of it simple delivers cars into the inner city. The whole idea of bringing a new freeway into the city's doorstep goes totally against the plans and the work - for decades - by the City of Melbourne and other groups to stop this whole concept. The consensus has developed and is very much accepted that we need to decrease car traffic into these inner areas and concentrate on fine tuning traffic management including but nor restricted to Public transport. Also the extra traffic goes against the idea of increasing Bike usage in the city.

Our Position Cont… Construction of the new Metro Rail project has begun and this is the type of project the inner City needs. It will provide public access to the new Parkville station and is exactly the type of infrastructure our City needs. There are projections that the Arden Macaulay residential development plus ongoing growth In North and West Melbourne will double this inner city population – they do not need a freeway depositing traffic in their streets. Better Connectivity is an argument put forward by this project’s proponents but Freeways to your doorstep are a simplistic and misleading proposition.

Questionable Claims – EES

Conclusion Transurban came up with this idea and this present government has embraced it!! This project will destroy the fabric and amenity of the inner northwest of the city and should be modified to a major degree or scrapped altogether.

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