Shire moves to clarify Anglesea road worries

THE Surf Coast Shire has updated its submission to the Anglesea Futures Draft Land Use Plan in the face of a significant backlash to a suggested change to the town’s road network.

Councillors considered an amendment to the submission at their April meeting.

Part of the shire’s original submission to the Anglesea Futures project in February included a suggestion to study changes to Anglesea’s road network, with the existing route along Coalmine Road and Messmate Track, connecting to Harvey Street listed as “an option for consideration”.

Despite the submission explicitly stating “this will be to assist the movement of local traffic using a local road network and not result in an Anglesea ring road, highway or bypass”, Corangamite federal member Sarah Henderson and some Anglesea residents said the option would be a “pseudo-bypass”, and the amendment aimed to provide clarity to the shire’s intentions.

The amendment, moved and seconded by Anglesea councillors Libby Coker and Margot Smith, affirmed that the shire did not support changes that would see local residential streets used as an alternate route by users of the Great Ocean Road, and noted that Messmate Track was managed by Parks Victoria but the council believed that the track should not be upgraded for use as a road.

The motion was questioned by Cr Heather Wellington, who asked: “Was it a mistake that we put this in, or was it something that we put in intentionally but didn’t realise there’d be a community backlash on, or have people misinterpreted it?

“Why did we think it was a good idea a month ago, and now we don’t?”

In response, Cr Smith said one of the “glaring absences” in the draft use plan was that it did not talk about the potential impact on roads and traffic, and that she “took a fair bit of responsibility” for the shire’s submission and the subsequent events.

“Without enough thought about what the implications might be from a community sense, or the road or the track usage, we actually put an example in there that probably should not been in there, because it actually created a situation where community members looked at it, and rightly so, and saw something different to what we meant.

“I do apologise sincerely to my community and hope that we can get a better outcome on this.”