I’m losing my grip and blogging momentum with still six days to go for #blogjune so just wanting to pop this one out to sort of stay on track. In my council area Brimbank there has forever been a few terrible railway level crossings. For quite some time at a former institution I worked for they have a campus in St. Albans. I had occasion to go to that campus for meetings BUT the major pain factor was crossing over one of the horrible level crossing intersections to get there knowing how terrible it must be for students or staff that are based there to do it on a daily basis.
There have been some fatalities over the years at these intersections I know of. There has been anguish and angst and talk for years about improvement. The electrification on this line was extended to an outer town Sunbury, but the crossings remained even with this additional rail traffic. There has been talk of extensions and offshoots of the line for a railway line to the airport, but the crossings remained. They remodeled one of the bad intersections by doing an underground road and removing a bad roundabout, but in the remodeling did nothing to facilitate or improve the biking infrastructure or opportunities for that intersection even though there was talk and rhetoric of doing it at the time. It remains a lost opportunity without proper linkage or ability to cycle easily through or around it. As a biking group Brimbank Bike User Group (BrimBUG), of which I am secretary, have remained vocal with Brimbank council about this lost opportunity and possibilities for improvement. In bike advocacy one must be persistent in lobbying for the cause.
Over the last few years the major focus has been the Regional Rail Link and as a consequence and through lobbying and persistence with BrimBUG and council and other authorities there has been some biking infrastructure outcomes further down the railway track in the area in Sunshine and Albion. On Tuesday there were some announcements of level crossing improvements in St. Albans and Ginifer
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/st-albans-ginifer-heatherdale-stations-to-be-rebuilt-below-street-level/story-fni0fit3-1227410527838
I have alerted the BrimBUG president to lobby for biking infrastructure at these two opportunities. What struck me was reading some of the comments attached to these newspaper articles. So many issues, so many problems, so little respect for this announcement. Seems you cannot please everybody that is for sure.
GraemeO28 Librarian and biker 