Appeal to make Black Spur safe

By Kath Gannaway
NATIONALS candidate for Seymour Anthony Rolando is pushing for a radical, but he says possible, solution to improving safety on the Black Spur.
In an open letter to Premier John Brumby, Mr Rolando calls for the state government to fund a feasibility study into sealing Andersons Mill Road, providing a heavy-vehicle alternative between the Maroondah Highway at Narbethong and the Melba Highway at either Toolangi or Glenburn.
“If the Coalition gets in we will do the feasibility study,” Mr Rolando told the Mail.
He said he did a test drive along the 30 kilometre logging truck route after being approached by Narbethong Black Spur safety campaigner Nick Parisi.
Mr Parisi presented a petition signed by 1600 people to the state government earlier this year, calling for major changes to the Maroondah Highway on the Black Spur to make it safer. He says his pleas are being ignored by the government.
Mr Parisi is backing Mr Rolando’s proposal, which includes minor widening on parts of the Maroondah Highway and additional safety barriers.
“It would cost more, but I believe it would work,” he said.
Mr Rolando said Andersons Mill Road is a wide, hard rock-based road which runs through pine plantations and is basically flat.
“I went along it in a Ford Falcon and sat on 60kms quite comfortably,” he said.
“Because the road base is already done, all they would need to do is grade and seal it and some corners might need to be straightened.
“To me, it’s a no-brainer. It’s not as though you would have to start from scratch.”
Mr Rolando, in his letter to the premier, says a long-term piece of infrastructure making the road would provide a number of benefits.
“It would be the heavy vehicle route for all north and south travelling trucks, boats and caravans, making the Black Spur purely a tourist road,” he said.
“Truck drivers would overwhelmingly prefer not to have to travel the Black Spur and Healesville would benefit with the removal of log trucks from their picturesque town,” he said.
He said by using the Yarra Glen bypass, heavy vehicles would avoid all towns until they got to Coldstream, it would become a fire escape road for people on either side of the range and would be a faster route for emergency services.
It would also provide an alternative route when the Black Spur is closed due to storm damage.
Mr Parisi told the Mail while he would like to see a road duplication on the Black Spur, he believed governments would not support it for fear of an environmental backlash.
“He (Rolando) is proposing to widen the (Spur) road in places and if we get three metre wide lanes through there, and the trucks off it so it is strictly a tourist road, that would be a good outcome,” he said.