Pressure is mounting on VicRoads to immediately upgrade Ballan Road following the announcement that another 20,000 people will soon call Wyndham home.
Seven-thousand homes are to be built as part of the Jubilee estate, which will border Ballan Road in Wyndham Vale. Building of the 482-hectare estate is expected to be completed in the next 15 to 20 years.
As revealed by Star Weekly earlier this month, the state government has announced approval of the Westbrook precinct structure plan (PSP) as part of the $533 million Wyndham West Development Contribution Plan.
Jubilee will be one of the estates making up the Westbrook PSP, which will, in turn, have five separate “villages” creating smaller neighbourhood areas.
The plans for Westbrook show that Ballan Road will be widened to six lanes, but it could be later than 2025 before the roadworks are completed.
Greg Byrne, of the Fix Ballan Road campaign, said action needed to be taken immediately.
“I’ve lived in Wyndham Vale since 1975 and, apart from a few traffic lights, Ballan Road has never been widened to cope with the extra traffic,” Mr Byrne said.
“How there hasn’t been someone killed there already is amazing. There is an accident between Bolton Road and Kinglake Drive every day.”
Mr Byrne urged VicRoads, which is responsible for Ballan Road, to duplicate the road before 2025.
“More homes are just going to overload the road even more,” he said. “It’s just not going to cope with this extra traffic.”
Wyndham sustainable development director Dean Rochfort said the council had concerns about inadequate local and state infrastructure.
“This was further highlighted by the recent Auditor-General’s report that signalled an $870 million-$1.3 billion backlog of infrastructure for Wyndham alone,” Mr Rochfort said.
Peter Bozzo, the managing director of estate developer Lotus Living, said the project would be created in a responsible way.
“It is no secret that the current infrastructure supporting the City of Wyndham is at capacity, which is why we are working to deliver a number of key facilities in the early stages of the project,” Mr Bozzo said.
Jubilee will include a 3.5-hectare government primary school, a nine-hectare private primary and secondary school, a childcare centre, 32.5-hectare employment precinct and a 6.62-hectare town centre with a supermarket, restaurant precinct and 8000 square metres of retail space.
“We have designed Jubilee with the intention of it becoming a suburb in
its own right, with all the facilities, amenity and services residents need on an every-day basis, all located within their own neighbourhood,” Mr Bozzo said.
Jubilee is the latest in a long list of new estates that have recently been announced for Wyndham.
As revealed by Star Weekly they include East Werribee, which will include 7000 homes, Upper Point Cook, with 2000 homes, and Lend Lease’s Harpley in west Wyndham, with 4000 homes.
