Earthworks along the Western Highway are expected to begin before the end of August as the state government looks to improve safety on some of the region’s most dangerous stretches of road.
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The Western Highway is among a host of roads across the Central Highlands where wire barriers are set to be installed in an effort to stop regional fatalities.
Major works are set to begin on the road in the coming months, while the government has been conducting community consultation with Creswick residents ahead of the installation of barriers along the Creswick-Ballarat Road stretch of the Midland Highway.
The road has been among the region’s most dangerous over the past decade.
Roads and Road Safety Minister Luke Donnellan said “we’re currently rolling out almost 1500km of flexible safety barriers across the state, part of a $1 billion package of upgrades to improve safety on country roads”.
“Flexible roadside barriers and centre line barriers on high risk, high volume 100km/hour roads have been shown to reduce run-off road and head-on crashes by up to 85 per cent on these sections.”
The government is in the final stages of rolling out safety upgrades to Daylesford-Trentham Road, Ballarat Maryborough Road, Bacchus Marsh-Gisborne Road, Myrninong-Trentham Road, Ballarat-Buninyong Road, Daylesford-Newstead Road, Hepburn Springs Road and Kyneton-Trentham Road.
While the projects currently under construction will only feature wire rope or guard rails, the government is still investigating whether to add centre line barriers to the Western and Midland highway projects.
