By Adam Carey
When his wife was forced to cancel a chemotherapy appointment, Beveridge resident Bernard Wright knew the traffic problems in his suburb had become intolerable. A truck had caught fire on the Hume Freeway, and all southbound lanes were blocked.
“We were landlocked that day. There were kids trapped on school buses for three hours trying to get home from Kilmore. And my wife had to cancel her chemo appointment because she couldn’t get out of the estate,” Wright says.
Beveridge residents Caroline Moschetti, Bernard Wright and his wife, Sarah, say traffic in their growth suburb has become impossible. Credit: Justin McManus
Wright, his wife and their two children live in Melbourne’s northernmost suburb, an isolated and car-dependent growth community whose residents say they have been sold a dream then abandoned.
There are two roads out of Beveridge: two-lane Lithgow Road, where residents queue for up to 45 minutes every morning to access the freeway, and the unpaved Old Sydney Road, a rough stretch of gravel some residents fear to use.
At a tense community meeting with politicians and councillors last month, people spoke of seeing an ambulance with its sirens on stuck in gridlocked local traffic; of the local CFA crew being unable to reach a grassfire on the other side of the freeway.
“They were lucky that I bit my tongue that night because there was a few kids around. I wanted to let a few four-letter words go,” Wright says of the meeting.
Ten years ago, Beveridge was a small farming town on the Hume Highway known for being a boyhood home to Ned Kelly. Today, it is a fast-growing suburb of several thousand people, with hundreds of new homes under construction but no shops or sporting fields and just four daily bus services. Key access roads still resemble farm tracks, narrow and potholed with gravel edges.
“It all seems to be approved: the houses, get them built, get people in, but there’s no way to get them in and out in the morning and afternoons,” Wright says.
The frustration is shared by Caroline Moschetti, who last month witnessed a serious accident at the intersection of Lithgow Street and Patterson Road. Moschetti said the intersection was notorious, and she had seen harried drivers ignoring the give-way sign and speeding in their rush to get ahead of the morning queue.
“It’s something that really needs to be looked into before something tragic happens,” Moschetti said.
Beveridge Primary School has gone so far as to urge young students to write to the government about the “daily frustration” of morning drop-off and pick-up times and push “to reduce the traffic congestion, upgrading the unsafe roads and footpaths and the school facilities”.
The school newsletter lists the email addresses of MPs including Premier Jacinta Allan, Education Minster Ben Carroll and Transport Minister Gabrielle Williams.
“Your voice matters in helping to address the traffic congestion and find solutions that will improve the daily lives of all in Beveridge,” it says.
The community-wide anguish is a far cry from the vision put forward more than eight years ago when Beveridge was launched.
Morning traffic banks up in Beveridge as residents queue to get onto the Hume Freeway.Credit: Justin McManus
“The new suburb will be a 10-minute drive from key employment hubs, including the future Merrifield Business Park and Craigieburn. It will have good access to the potential future Beveridge train station, and will also connect to the planned future Lockerbie train station,” the Victorian Planning Authority said.
There is no Beveridge train station.
Beveridge is located in the southern part of the regional shire of Mitchell, which is forecast to have the largest proportional population rise in Victoria over the next decade.
The forecast explosion in growth, from 65,000 next year to 120,000 by 2036, follows the expansion of Melbourne’s urban growth boundary 12 years ago, when rural land between Craigieburn and Wallan was marked for suburban development.
Mitchell Shire councillor Claudia James said people at last month’s council-convened meeting were “desperate and angry”.
“The road situation is extremely serious and will get worse. There are hundreds of new homes being built on both sides of the Hume Freeway – all part of the government’s housing policy. The rate of development is mind-boggling,” James wrote in an email to government MPs.
Mitchell Shire Mayor John Dougall said Beveridge was the shire’s first taste of being part of the urban growth boundary, but had proved a planning failure.
“We would have to say up-front that we’re pretty disappointed with the outcomes delivered by the [Victorian Planning Authority] in Mitchell, and we don’t see a demonstrated commitment to seeing better outcomes,” Dougall said.
“This is particularly concerning when you think about how this is our early experience as part of the urban growth boundary. So this is the very first stage in a multi-year, decade-long growth ambition, and our first experience has been a poor outcome.”
Dougall said the problems in Beveridge had been compounded by the failure to progress plans for urban development in other parts of the shire.
Community facilities such as sports grounds and a commercial centre are planned to be built in the neighbouring precinct of Beveridge North West. The structure plan for that precinct was submitted for government approval in October 2022.
“That approval has been held up, and it’s been held up by the minister for planning,” Dougall said.
A Victorian government spokesperson said the Beveridge North West precinct structure plan was under consideration and that planning was under way for the Camerons Lane interchange, a new connection to the Hume Freeway that will reduce congestion and improve safety.
The interchange project has an expected completion date of 2031. The $900 million project has been funded by the Albanese government, which has also committed to fund the surfacing of Old Sydney Road.
Evan Mulholland, the Liberal MP for Northern Metropolitan, said Labor had botched the delivery of growth areas and let communities like Beveridge languish in traffic chaos.
“Residents are at breaking point, action is needed now,” he said.
“History is repeating itself, whether it is Kalkallo, Mt Atkinson or Beveridge, Labor is failing to provide the infrastructure to transform these housing estates into livable communities.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story reported that Caroline Moschetti witnessed a collision outside the gates of Beveridge Primary School. This was incorrect.
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