Fix for notorious traffic jam in Melbourne housing estate
For residents of Melbourne's booming outer north, what was perhaps the city's worst local traffic jam seems to have been fixed for now.
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TVTranscript
00:00 I'm here in Calcallo in Melbourne's booming outer north in what used to be one of the
00:07 city's worst local traffic snails.
00:09 But as you can see behind me, the traffic's actually moving really well today.
00:13 So we've come out to bring you a bit of a good news story to explain what's happened.
00:17 And I'm joined by Ali Watson, who is a Calcallo local.
00:20 Ali, this is incredible, but start off by telling us what was it like here in the mornings?
00:26 Good morning.
00:27 Yeah, it was really bad.
00:28 We had traffic that was building moment by moment.
00:33 Every new house that came in, we had obviously more cars.
00:35 We have a lot of houses that have got multiple vehicles, all trying to leave on one road
00:40 in and one road out.
00:41 And this is the only road for thousands of people.
00:44 So the wait time to get out was getting very, very long.
00:47 Building and, you know, when I was leaving at 20 past six in the morning, it could be
00:51 anything between 15 minutes and 40 minutes just to get to Donnybrook Road.
00:55 So one of the, it's obviously, you know, traffic is a multifaceted issue with lots of different
01:00 inputs.
01:01 But one of the things that's happened is the government has put a slip lane to get onto
01:04 the freeway.
01:05 So people heading out into inner Melbourne can get onto the freeway a bit easier.
01:09 And we can see it's had a real impact.
01:11 Tell us about how it's changed life for people here in Calcallo.
01:16 It's changed life enormously.
01:17 As you can see here, the traffic line is really, really small.
01:20 You know, this is at past 7am when really this traffic line would have been substantially
01:26 longer.
01:27 So it's allowing people to start their day and adjust their days a little bit more accordingly.
01:30 We've had people that have had to adjust their work times and things like that, leave ridiculously
01:35 early to get to school.
01:37 So they've been able to make those adjustments there.
01:39 And just simply not sitting in traffic at the start of your day does make for a far
01:43 less stressful start to your morning.
01:45 But also, it's been a really good example of where the community has stood up and said
01:50 this is a problem for us.
01:52 We need help.
01:53 We cannot change this ourselves.
01:55 And so I think not only is it less stressful in the morning, it's also confidence that
02:00 if we do say something, people can listen and we can get change happening.
02:04 Wonderful.
02:05 Well, thank you so much, Ellie.
02:06 And we can see that school bus just heading off there.
02:08 So hopefully those students are able to get off to school a lot more easier.
02:11 I remember being here and speaking to students who were, you know, nearly asleep in the car.
02:16 They'd been up so early trying to get to school.
02:19 So a good outcome for the community here in Cowcallow.
02:22 But as always, in the growing outer suburbs, lots more to do.
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