THE possibility of a Kialla West Primary School Melbourne Road crossing underpass is in the pipelines and would come to an estimated cost of between $750,000 and $1M.
Greater Shepparton City Council and the school’s council representatives met with Regional Roads Victoria recently to discuss plans to improve the safety of the crossing at the school, following an accident in September last year that saw three children and their mother taken to hospital; one flown to the Royal Children’s Hospital with serious injuries.
Greater Shepparton City Council Infrastructure Director, Phil Hoare said, “Following the incident last year everyone came together and met on-site to have a look at what we could do as an immediate response and there was a safety review carried out.
“While essentially the situation out there is ok in terms of standards, we looked at what we could do to improve things. We removed vegetation and line marking to improve visibility and replaced some of the marker posts and made them a bit brighter as an immediate response.
“Victoria Police has also undertaken an increase presence out there and the school has spoken to parents and children about actions to be taken to improve safety on-site.
“At the recent meeting we came together to see what the next steps are to improve the safety there. The general consensus is that the major issue is the traffic approaching the crossing from the south coming out of a high speed rule zone.
“We wanted to find a way that the drivers were alert to the potential to have to stop there and the obvious sign was to have advance warning signs so Regional Roads Victoria has committed to come back to us shortly as to how quickly that can be implemented.
“To do an underpass requires a level of investigation. There are some other traffic movements there we would like to address also such as pick up and drop off and we need to ensure this also fits in with the school’s masterplan.
“We agreed to do some design work and estimate that it would cost around $150,000 for that.
“We want to get moving on this as quickly as we can.”
