DONNYBROOK Road could be in line for a full duplication under a plan from the Liberals if successful in the upcoming state election.
The plan would be to duplicate Donnybrook Road from Epping Road in Woodstock to Dwyer Street in Kalkallo, which would cost $524 million.
An estimate of 35,000 vehicles travel along Donnybrook Road, which is claimed to safely carry around 20,000 a day, while some residents report waiting 40 minutes to leave their housing estate.
Opposition Leader Jess Wilson said it was a high priority for her team.
“Labor has left the residents of Melbourne’s north stuck in traffic for too long, but my team has a plan to fix it,” she said.
Shadow Minister for Transport Infrastructure, Evan Mulholland, said Donnybrook Road was overwhelmed.
“Every single day, thousands of residents in Melbourne’s north are being punished with 40-minute waits just to get out of their housing estate. Donnybrook Road has been completely overwhelmed by rapid growth, yet Labor has ignored this community while billions of dollars are wasted on cost overruns and corruption on big build projects elsewhere,” he said.
“Removing the bottleneck at the level crossing and duplicating the entire eight-kilometre stretch is part of the Liberals and Nationals plan to deliver infrastructure to the very communities that have been starved of it.”
The plan is a direct response to the Federal Government’s planning to duplicate a section of Donnybrook Road, which was announced in May last year.
Funding for a second bridge over the Hume Highway and a duplication to Dwyer Street were announced, with $125 million contributed for stage one of the project.
For the bridge, $37.4 million was contributed by the federal government, and $7.7 million from the state government.
The stage one upgrades would see the roundabout at Donnybrook Road and Mitchell Street turned into a fully-signalled intersection and a new bridge over Kalkallo Creek, while the second stage would see the bridge and duplication completed.