Campaign against Eastern Ring Road relaunched

Issue 

Campaign against Eastern Ring Road relaunched

By Marcel Cameron

MELBOURNE — Two hundred people attended an Anti-Ring Road Organisation (ARRO) public meeting in Eltham on April 30 to relaunch the campaign against the proposed Eastern Ring Road.

Along with the City Link tunnel under the Yarra River, the Eastern Ring Road is a centrepiece of the state government's freeway construction program, involving 210 kilometres of new freeways at an estimated cost of $6 billion.

Construction of the 90-kilometre road was begun by Labor in the 1980s. The western section, from Altona to Greensborough, is almost complete and the Scoresby section, from Mornington to Ringwood, is under construction.

Nick Low, a lecturer in urban planning at Melbourne University, told the meeting that demand for an orbital freeway simply doesn't exist and that Melbourne's traffic congestion can be alleviated only by a well-funded and properly coordinated public transport system.

Jason Torrance, a British anti-roads activist, described the success of the movement in Britain. At its peak, the All London Against the Road-building Menace coalition mobilised almost 500,000 people and defeated the British government's roads program.

ARRO spokesperson Fia Clendinnen said that construction of the Eastern Ring Road would "destroy thousands of homes and hundreds of hectares of bushland in the environmentally sensitive Green Wedge planning zone". She argued that "we need to combat VicRoads' misinformation and educate the public. Our approach is to build a grassroots campaign — the only way to stop Kennett is for the whole community to kick up a fuss." Clendinnen also pointed out that the state ALP supports construction of the Scoresby freeway, the largest section of the ring road.

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