Christine Pruneau, secretary, Macedon Ranges Residents Association
Checked council’s ‘Shared Trails’ proposals yet? You should.
What a $20 million ‘tear up’ of where we live, with ratepayers apparently up for over $350,000 yearly for maintenance.
Up north, there’s a mix of Daylesford/Tylden/Carlsruhe/Kyneton/Woodend/Hanging Rock trails, and down south, a Woodend/Macedon/New Gisborne/Riddells Creek trail.
Promoted as improving community wellbeing, in reality these proposals promote serious cycling and tourism interests, and are intended to increase visitors (i.e. “nature-based tourism”). The Daylesford to Hanging Rock trail alone expects up to 70,000 users a year, with only 10 per cent locals.
Roughly 60kms of new, three-metre-wide, two-way bitumen track is proposed, much of it within the active rail reserves next to the active trains.
It runs along Woodend’s Avenue of Honour (west side), and possibly also Macedon’s, through town centres and residential streets e.g. Bruce Street Macedon, North and Daly Streets Woodend, and under the Calder Freeway at Woodend.
It takes over some existing walking tracks, shares public roadways from the freeway to Hanging Rock, traverses Macedon Regional Park and Walter Smith Reserve and turns unmade quiet residential streets (Donovan/Parkers/Montgomery roads, Woodend, Markham Road, Riddell) into sealed shared trails. New Gisborne’s Chessy Park Estate is also affected by a separate trail.
This vision needs land access agreements and possible compulsory acquisition ($1.75 million is costed), traffic calming and intersection safety systems, three car parks, a toilet, 88 signs, 12 bridges (plus the uncosted Edgecombe St Kyneton bridge) and thousands of metres of fencing. Board walks and new bridges are proposed at heritage bridges/fords, with vegetation removal throughout apparently to be off-set with new plantings in the disused rail reserve between Carlsruhe and Daylesford (where both bitumen and horse-riding trails are proposed).
Trying to please everyone may end in not pleasing anyone. Are you affected? See council’s website. Comments close March 25.
