Viral photos have revealed residents of one suburb are enduring daily, hour-long traffic queues as Australia’s housing problem explodes.
Insane photos of traffic chaos causing daily, hour-long delays for residents of a Melbourne suburb have exposed Australia’s growing housing disaster.
This week, the ABC’s Margaret Paul was in Kalkallo – a new suburb located around 50km north of the city’s CBD, with a population of more than 5500 – reporting on the painful and ongoing traffic delays plaguing the area.
Just after 8am on Tuesday morning, Ms Paul shared one photo of a queue stretching “500m back into the housing estate”, claiming she had seen desperate drivers “overtaking on the wrong side of the road and driving onto the grass to turn left” and that “the frustration is intense”.
A shortage of buses is exacerbating the problem. Picture: Twitter/@margaretpaul
She went on to share a second picture – taken around 7.30am – showing the queue from another angle, claiming she had seen just “three buses in the hour I’ve been here”.
Ms Paul then shared a third, even more dramatic picture of a Kalkallo street with bumper-to-bumper traffic stretching for 1km, writing that: “I’ve found the back of what locals say is the completely everyday traffic queue to get out of this housing estate in Kalkallo”.
The reporter acknowledged that there were plans to alleviate the congestion, with the State Government funding a $6 million slip lane onto a main road, along with a new shuttle bus service connecting Donnybrook and Craigieburn stations.
The local council is advocating for those measures to be rolled out as soon as possible, and a second exit on to the main road, Donnybrook Rd, is reportedly coming in 2024.
However, furious Twitter users were quick to ask why the estate was allowed to be built without factoring in the obvious traffic issues.
“How did this pass planning approval and why wasn’t the developer made to do correct traffic modelling? Why are we as tax payers made to pay for developer mistakes? Should be a bond system to ensure mistakes are paid for by those that profited on the sale of land!” one Twitter user posted.
Another shared a map of the Kalkallo estate, which revealed that developers had built “an entire suburb that is connected to the main road network by a single, small road”.
However, it appears Kalkallo is far from an isolated example, with social media users pointing out similar concerns in other Victorian towns, including Point Cook and Truganina, as well as Anthony’s Cutting in Bacchus Marsh, where “half the road” is missing due to a “landslide with a 30m drop”, causing ongoing congestion.
But it’s a problem also seem across the country as well, especially in outer Sydney, where the suburb of Marsden Park, for example, also only has one access road – which also serves as the evacuation route for nearby Windsor, South Windsor and Windsor Downs.
Exactly Ian. This is Marsden Park. The home lots inside the red circle are shown on spatial mapping as being below the 1:100 flood height.
One road for access, which is also the evac route for Windsor, South Windsor & Windsor Downs. pic.twitter.com/kTBji9vVRB
— I live in the Hawkesbury (@VWHawkesbury) February 20, 2023
Speaking to Yahoo News, Western Sydney University professor Ian Wright said poor planning decisions meant an increasingly number of Aussie families were living in isolated wastelands.
“I think there is this absolute desperation for families [to get] a roof over [their] head. That Aussie dream; having a family, having your own house,” he told the publication.
“Then there is this promise of ‘yeah, the high schools are coming, the shops will be coming, the train line will get extended. It’s all these promises and it’s just awful.
“The city needs to return to planning where facilities like schools, hospitals, roads, and libraries are considered before housing development.”
Leave a Reply