Community
28 November, 2024
Lower speed limit welcomed in Darlington
DARLINGTON residents are ecstatic their community is now safer thanks to a lower speed limit on the Hamilton Highway.
The State Government reduced the speed limit outside the Elephant Bridge Hotel from 80kmh to 60kmh recently.
The 60kmh zone is from the cemetery/car club/recreation reserve entrance through to Jellalabad Road.
Corangamite Shire Council Mt Elephant Ward councillor Nick Cole thanked Minister for Roads and Road Safety Melissa Horne for listening to the community’s concerns.
“We’ve been advocating for it for a long time,” he said.
“I think one thing that really tipped the balance was the community meeting that was held.
“We were advocating all the time about how Darlington was the outlier being 80kmh.”
Cr Cole said the rest of the towns along the highway already had a speed limit of 60kmh, with the change set to bring about safety in the community.
“We’ve got emergency services and school kids accessing the roads, and trucks whipping through,” he said.
“We use Nuggets Flat for community barbecues and it’s where the fire truck fills up.
“We’d spoken to the minister about it. We brought it up and told her those things.
“It’s an easy fix. It’s only six signs. They’re not spending hundreds of thousands of dollars. It was all done in a day.
“It’s a common-sense thing. Thankfully the government has done the job.”
Resident Trish Wynd said there were a couple of crashes in the area every year.
The most recent one shut the highway for 12 hours, and there have been fatalities just outside the area.
“We have a safety issue with people leaving the pub straight onto the highway and trucks taking both lanes when they turn off the Camperdown road,” Ms Wynd said.
Turning into Darlington with limited visibility of oncoming traffic was also risky, she said.
“There was a highway meeting held a number of weeks ago for Lismore, Darlington and Derrinallum with issues of speed and incorrect driving manners.
“About 50 people turned up from Derrinallum and a few from Darlington.”
Ms Wynd said a community petition had gained more than 100 signatures advocating for the speed limit to be introduced.
“A number of residents wrote letters which were sent with pictures of accidents and petitions to Parliamentarians and government agencies,” she said.
“On November 14 the signs got put up in town. This is a great outcome for all of us.”
Since the signs have been up, traffic “has been much calmer,” Ms Wynd said.
“I think everyone is very hopeful that it will a make a big difference.”
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