TWO LANES HAVE been removed from the planned four-lane Warragul Ring Road by the Baw Baw Shire Council.
Baw Baw Shire Mayor Diane Blackwood said the project was reassessed after it emerged the cost of the original plan would be $3 million.
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“It came to Council’s attention that original plans required a road reserve width of 34 metres, however only 24 metres had to be provided by the developer to build the road to a contractually-agreed standard,” Ms Blackwood said.
“This extra 10 metres was going to cost Council around $3 million, so we asked for the plans to be reassessed.”
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A Baw Baw Shire media release says “modelling has demonstrated that this plan was unnecessarily extensive.”
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The council has endorsed a two-lane road with no median strip.
A Baw Baw Shire Council spokesperson told The Warragul Citizen the reduction in lanes will not affect use.
“The original traffic modelling in 2006 included the additional lanes to encourage the use of the ring road as an option for those who wanted only to go through the CBD of Warragul to travel to areas either side of Warragul,” the spokesperson said.
“There have been changes such as the funding for the alternate rail crossing by the State Government [and] the Warragul Masterplan [which] once implemented would change the intersection of Smith/Victoria Street in the CBD”.
The spokesperson said the re-drafting only cost the council $750.
“The vast majority of the review was done in-house by council officers,” the spokesperson said.
“An independent desktop assessment was undertaken by a traffic consultant just to verify officers review (sic) outcomes [The] cost was $750
The spokesperson said the ring road “will loop around Warragul from Warragul-Drouin Road to Copelands Road, with intersections at many roads between such as Brandy Creek Road, Pharaohs Road and Bowen Street.”
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