Traffic lights make the cut

By Kath Gannaway
VICROADS has been given the green light to proceed with the installation of traffic lights at the Melba and Maroondah highways intersection in Coldstream.
In a five/four vote on Tuesday, 14 April, Yarra Ranges Council reversed an earlier decision in which they refused VicRoads a permit to remove a large gum tree they said had to go before the project could proceed.
VicRoads appealed the decision to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) and in the meantime acceded to the council’s request for a redesign of the project which would deliver on the safety improvements at the intersection and retain the tree.
VicRoads again rejected a roundabout as an alternative saying it would not manage peak traffic flow, but did submit an alternative design involving extensive road widening on the south side of the Maroondah Highway.
Cr Jeanette McRae said the alternative design did not offer a viable alternative requiring considerable vegetation removal and impacting on the driveway access and amenity of adjacent residents to an unacceptable level.
Cr Cox was critical of VicRoads saying they had refused to see the roundabout solution as an option and branding them less than co-operative.
“They said there was no other alternative,” he said and added that council was left with just two alternatives, to chop down the tree, or do nothing at all.
In response to Cr Heenan’s introductory comments that it was disappointing that a decision had not been made sooner, and his call for “common sense to prevail”, both Crs Warren and McRae defended the original decision to challenge VicRoads.
Cr Warren said the issue was about more than the tree but was about finding the best and safest solution for traffic management at the intersection.
Cr McRae said while the permit application had been for the removal of the tree and that had caused the focus to be largely on that one aspect of their decision, it was not about the tree but about getting the best possible traffic management outcome.
“It was our right to challenge VicRoads to get the best possible outcomes for the community,” she said.
While the Coldstream community has lost a tree, they have, under the new deal, gained part of a bicycle path.
Cr Higgins, while casting his vote with Crs Templer, Warren, Heenan and Cox to allow VicRoads to remove the contentious tree, said however he was at a loss to understand why VicRoads had proposed the bike path which “doesn’t seem to go anywhere.”
The suggestion put forward in the briefing was that the proposed section would “eventually” form part of a continuous bicycle path between Lilydale and Healesville.