Having spent some time reading and analysing the Eddington Truck Action Plan I am of the view that it represents a great opportunity for the West. It is not perfect and does need some tweaking but it acknowledges the problem of excessive truck traffic and, if implemented, will direct resources to badly needed infrastructure.
The concerns expressed by residents of West Footscray, Maidstone and Tottenham, about the implications of the plan for these suburbs are fair enough. Many residents in these suburbs are worried that if the plan is implemented truck traffic will be diverted from the streets of Yarraville and forced onto Ballarat Rd via Ashley St. But it needs to be clearly stated that the Maribyrnong Truck Action group has never advocated the upgrade of Ashley St and widening of Ballarat Rd for the alleviation of truck traffic problems. The last thing we would want to see is the problem shifted from one suburb to another.
However, even though these aspects of Eddington’s proposal seem unnecessary that does not mean that the whole thing is flawed. In fact his Truck Action Plan comprises three options, each proposing a suite of measures. MTAG is currently engaged in developing a response as part of the community consultation phase of the project, we think there are good and bad aspects in each of the options and that a combination of elements of the three will produce the best results.
It’s too complicated to begin to describe how the whole thing might work in a short letter like this, and therein lies the problem with much of the criticism contained in recent coverage of the issue: it’s too simplistic.
Overall though, what we have is the State Government prepared to spend money to get trucks off our streets. This is a good thing! I believe we need to get behind this as a community, to develop a unified response and support those who are pushing for change.

One of the reasons the Ballarat Road widening is often suggested, is probably due to the large number of properties already owned by VicRoads, particularly on the south side.

Peter do you still have the figures for the stevedoring costs of rail compared with road?

The Eddington Report suggests that Ballarat Road is a bottleneck (’a constraint on the network’) and that widening it would increase traffic flow. However it seems to me that the bottleneck derives from the fact that both Ballarat and Geelong Roads connect and are funneled into a single crossing of the Maribyrnong River. Widening Ballarat Road won’t solve that problem.

The Public Transport Users Association has some more information on their website about how reducing so called traffic bottlenecks does not alleviate traffic congestion.

The DOI website appears to indicate that this was recommended as a way of taking truck traffic away from residential streets in Yarraville/Seddon (see Fact Sheet 5 on the Truck Action Plan). It seems to me that this is just shifting the problem from one residential area to another - less trucks in Francis St and Whitehall St but more trucks down Ballarat Rd (which already carries a large number of trucks).

I have been concerned because from what I’ve seen in the media it seems as though both MTAG and Maribyrnong Council are supportive of this recommendation (because it has not specifically been excluded in any of the press releases I have read). I feel as though residents of Footscray, Maidstone and Braybrook are being done over in favour of those in other areas of Maribyrnong. As a number of people have noted above, it should be about shifting trucks from all areas in the west. It should be about getting smarter about our freight transport (e.g. less road widening and more rail improvements so that freight can be shifted from the port to pickup points for road freight which are in outer commercial/industrial parts of the city - this would be better than spending money on an east-west tunnel).

The map above somewhat indicates that it will not, but there are a few large tanks in the way preventing the proposed road to be constructed.

Having x number of trucks travelling north along Hyde Street, would be equally (if not more) problematic than the issues along Francis Street.

BTW, nice discussion.