How many of those vehicle accidents involved trucks or heavy vehicles?

The Daniel Andrews approach to road safety is not to remove trucks and heavy vehicles off roads and goods onto rail but to build double road duplicated freeways to every corner of the state.

$273m which could have been used to foster freight onto rail reducing heavy vehicle movements.

Changes To Western Highway Duplication

Most accidents are cars
It needs duplicated and should have been to stawell by now.
Its a busy hwy even without trucks.

How many of those vehicle accidents involved trucks or heavy vehicles?

The Daniel Andrews approach to road safety is not to remove trucks and heavy vehicles off roads and goods onto rail but to build double road duplicated freeways to every corner of the state.

$273m which could have been used to foster freight onto rail reducing heavy vehicle movements.

Changes To Western Highway Duplication

Don't forget that its part of the National Highway, the Feds pay about 75% of the cost.

I drive that section of road quite often and the local aborigines have set up a very nice camp next to the trees just on the Melbourne side of Arrarat . Power to them, although the 80km/h speed restriction is uneeded through that section .

My observations on that section of road are; the trucks move as fast as permitted (never slower) , cars seem to travel fine ( unless there is a fish bumper sticker, you know the ones!), motorbikes enjoy the ride , it's those selfish ignorant fools towing a caravan who have to much time on their hands, somehow think just because their towing a caravan they can drive 10-15 km below the speed limit. Or they like to show off their inability to drive with a caravan at said speed limit.To busy looking at the scenery to focus on the job at hand, driving! Give them the one fingered salute and they probably think your being nice to them.

if your driving a distance of 400 - 500 kms , getting stuck behind one does make a difference. Don't blame the road , blame the users . But in the true Victorian nanny state way no one is ever held accountable for there actions

Sentiments 10/10.  Spelling 5/10.

I drive that section of road quite often and the local aborigines have set up a very nice camp next to the trees just on the Melbourne side of Arrarat . Power to them, although the 80km/h speed restriction is uneeded through that section .

My observations on that section of road are; the trucks move as fast as permitted (never slower) , cars seem to travel fine ( unless there is a fish bumper sticker, you know the ones!), motorbikes enjoy the ride , it's those selfish ignorant fools towing a caravan who have to much time on their hands, somehow think just because their towing a caravan they can drive 10-15 km below the speed limit. Or they like to show off their inability to drive with a caravan at said speed limit.To busy looking at the scenery to focus on the job at hand, driving! Give them the one fingered salute and they probably think your being nice to them.

if your driving a distance of 400 - 500 kms , getting stuck behind one does make a difference. Don't blame the road , blame the users . But in the true Victorian nanny state way no one is ever held accountable for there actions

I USED to drive long distances once (outback Qld notwithstanding), but gave it up as a very frustrating and EXPENSIVE exercise when air-fares became deregulated.

When I retire in a few years, I'll probably join the slow van haulers for the great circumnavigation.

Nowadays it's V/Line, TrainLink, The Overland and Virgin for me.

Mike.

Andrew's will not be happy until the road freight lobby has double lanes freeway to every town in Victoria.

Andrew's will not be happy until the road freight lobby has double lanes freeway to every town in Victoria.

Well in that case the Rail Lobby needs to clean up its act and get smarter. When you have barking mad lobbyists like the RRA with heir hairbrained ideas it's no wonder they don't take any notice of them.

Andrew's will not be happy until the road freight lobby has double lanes freeway to every town in Victoria.

bevans, what is the " Dan the Man ", Bashing session, about ?

I don't think it unreasonable to have a decent freeway, that is part of the NATIONAL Highway system, leading into Australia's, almost biggest city, is it ?

The faster and simpler, the traffic can get in and out, of the city, the better I would have thought.

It's not a recent project, the western highway, has been sneaking, westward for probably 45 years.

Also remembering, of the, towards 2000 trucks, say through, Horsham, a night, the big majority of them are running from as far away as Perth. So the freight movement, on a national scale is an issue, which has been increasing, long before Dan or I have been, giving lectures.  

BigShunter.

Andrew's will not be happy until the road freight lobby has double lanes freeway to every town in Victoria.

Not exactly.  Towns are mostly bypassed, but can be accessed via the "old" highway.

I think BigShunter is right on the money.

Whether you like it or not, many people like to use the road, and some have to. Decades of closing lines and stations is partly to blame, and the comparitive ease of owning a car and the convenience of being able to go point-to-point in that one vehicle adds to the picture.
Road usage is a fact of life, and I don't see why criticism is levelled at making haevy-use country roads easier to negotiate.

There has been a barrow-load of discussion about returning passenger trains to everywhere from Mildura, Horsham, Leongatha and all points east or west.
Nobody can predict passenger interest or usage and the expenditure would be horrendous, hence no government is going to stick its neck out that far.

The "rail-at-all-costs" fans won't like it, but that's the way it is.

I think BigShunter is right on the money.

Whether you like it or not, many people like to use the road, and some have to. Decades of closing lines and stations is partly to blame, and the comparitive ease of owning a car and the convenience of being able to go point-to-point in that one vehicle adds to the picture.
Road usage is a fact of life, and I don't see why criticism is levelled at making haevy-use country roads easier to negotiate.

There has been a barrow-load of discussion about returning passenger trains to everywhere from Mildura, Horsham, Leongatha and all points east or west.
Nobody can predict passenger interest or usage and the expenditure would be horrendous, hence no government is going to stick its neck out that far.

The "rail-at-all-costs" fans won't like it, but that's the way it is.

Nice take Valvegear. Some people don't seem to grasp that running trains to every hamlet and wayside stop is equally as wasteful as having trucks and cars bear the brunt of traffic on high-volume freight and passenger routes respectively. There is a time and a place for both.

Andrew's will not be happy until the road freight lobby has double lanes freeway to every town in Victoria.

Well in that case the Rail Lobby needs to clean up its act and get smarter. When you have barking mad lobbyists like the RRA with heir hairbrained ideas it's no wonder they don't take any notice of them.

When it comes to lobbying our rail operators don't seem too keen, even the Australasian Railway Association seems to have gone quiet.

One thing that really gives me the pip about some Rail & PT advocates is their completely blinkered opinions.

Opinions that are so singularly focused that they have crossed over into the irrational.

Even if the government provided a world's best rail network for both passengers and freight, there would still be a need for a National Highway network linking all of our capital cities.

Yes, I do think more needs to be done to entice freight back to rail, but the rail industry itself is its own worst enemy at times. Some of the larger rail freight operators can't even keep the traffic they have without losing it road, let alone enticing new traffic to the tracks.

And as others have said, where is the rail lobby? Who is out there pushing the governments to do more from a rail freight perspective? The only group that seem to get any attention are the counter-productive dribblers from the RRA who are almost certainly doing the cause more damage than good.

Why aren't the rail freight operators getting together to publicly lobby the state government for a better deal with network access fees? Or the Federal government for that matter?  I mean, this is what the road operators do, and it has been proven to work for them, so why don't the rail operators do something similar?

Is it possible that the rail freight operators have just become lazy?

No, instead by all means, just bash Dan Andrews around a bit more. After all, 3AW and the Herald Sun have turned it into a sport, why shouldn't we participate?

How many of those vehicle accidents involved trucks or heavy vehicles?

What does this have to do with anything?

The relevant question would be: "Is their a higher proportion of serious accidents along this stretch of road involving heavy vehicles?"

If the answer to that question is yes, then the only logical course of action is to improve the road.

So I don't really see the problem here, unless of course it is that blinkered rail-always-road-never opinion type of thing I referred to in my previous post.

Even if the government provided a world's best rail network for both passengers and freight, there would still be a need for a National Highway network linking all of our capital cities.

Yes, I do think more needs to be done to entice freight back to rail, but the rail industry itself is its own worst enemy at times. Some of the larger rail freight operators can't even keep the traffic they have without losing it road, let alone enticing new traffic to the tracks.

Absolutely correct. Unfortunately though, some people will always come up with a synopsis shallower than a puddle, because that is the way they think and vote.

There are road transport companies out there who are utilising rail more and more. TNT began the trend last century, and (for example) Lindsay is a contemporary farm-to-port logistics company that has recently bought into rail for a solution to facilitate their expansion to the west coast with the purchase of dozens of refrigerated rail containers costing almost $6m:
http://imagesignal.commsec.com.au/docserver/02020840.pdf?fileid=02020840&datedir=20180910&edt=MjAxOS0wMi0wNCsyMjoxOTo1MisxMjArMCtjb21zZWMrcmVkaXJlY3QrL2ltYWdlc2lnbmFsL2Vycm9ycGFnZXMvUERGVGltZW91dC5odG1sKy9pbWFnZXNpZ25hbC9lcnJvcnBhZ2VzL3BkZmRlbGF5ZWQuanNw