Expanding population in all western suburbs, serviced by the Westgate Freeway and Westgate Bridge, has seen ever increasing delays and extended journey-to-work times to Melbourne’s CBD.  Until the Tunnel from Footscray under the Yarra River is built there is little relief in sight and there is likely to be increased pressure on the road network.  Williamstown is particularly impacted by its only main road to the Westgate Bridge Freeway being Melbourne Rd.  Other routes require using residential streets.  A move to approve high rise developments is likely to have a large impact on this journey-to-work into the CBD and impact badly on existing residents.  It could even be argued that as an alternative expanding employment opportunities in Williamstown and Newport by using industrial land for business/employment purposes rather than changing it to residential would have beneficial effects and introduce an element of reverse commuting.

The Old Flour Mill and land near to Melbourne Rd on Blackshaws Rd have been approved for residential mixed use development. The OId Flour Mill will have over 200 dwellings.

We will need experienced traffic engineers and planners with experience of traffic generation in journey-to-work to analyse and present critical argument on traffic analysis provided by the developer.

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Council has done a number of Traffic Studies in the Williamstown area and when we can obtain them - we will place them on the website.

In 2008 Hobsons Bay City Council prepared a Submission to the Eddington Inquiry.  This can be downloaded: East-West%20Submission%20City%20of%20Hobsons%20Bay.pdf

In documents submitted by the Developer in August 09 as part of the development application (see Greenlight  Document: Sub200981512283996.GTA - Final Traffic Report - August 2009.pdf), it is projected that future residents of up to 453 dwellings comprising Nelson Place Village (former Port Phillip Woollen Mill site) will generate 2728 trips per day of which 50% will use the residential street Hanmer St to access Melbourne Rd going past both Williamstown and WIlliamstown North Primary Schools as they access the city.  The report suggests there will be an offset from previous uses of the site but that is likely to be negated by the recently announced increase in jobs at BAE Systems with the shipyard’s workforce jumping from 178 to 400.