Northern Highway Echuca pedestrian crossing
Mr WALSH (Murray Plains) (13:37:54) — I raise the concerns of parents whose children now have to cross the very busy Northern Highway in Echuca to attend the new Echuca Twin Rivers Primary School. I had a letter from a mother there who says she is a resident of Echuca and:
… a concerned mother of two primary school boys. I write to you to express my concern for the children of Echuca South regarding the lack of a safe and appropriate pedestrian crossing for schoolchildren on the Northern Highway south of the roundabout at Ogilvie Avenue.
Whilst the children … are very excited to be transitioning from Echuca South Primary School to the new school site of Echuca Twin Rivers Primary School located on Wilkinson Drive we are quite worried about the safety aspect of the new location.
Members of our community have expressed their concerns to the Shire of Campaspe and to VicRoads yet it is disappointing as we find that neither body of authority claims responsibility for implementing the road safety aspect of a pedestrian crossing over Northern Highway. In fact each claim that the other is responsible for such infrastructure.
There are 165 students that were attending the Echuca South Primary School. The overwhelming majority of those students if they walk to school will have to cross the Northern Highway. It is a disgrace that VicRoads in particular has not done something about that crossing before this. The school was announced two years ago. It has been built and VicRoads still has not resolved this issue. Some people have been unkind enough to say that VicRoads does not address an issue until there are statistics to claim it should be done. Those children do have to cross that road and they deserve a safe crossing.