Campaign against trucks in Melbourne’s west still going strong, with the Greens launching new campaign to get government to act
April 4, 2012
The campaign against trucks in Melbourne’s west is still going strong, with Greens MP Colleen Hartland launching a new campaign to pressure the government to act.
Hartland will distribute cards to locals to get the message to Premier Ted Baillieu ahead of this year’s state budget.
She will help the community distribute the cards that will be sent to the government.
“The cards have a simple message: Trucks are driving us up the wall,” she says.
“One freight train takes 110 trucks off the road.”
Along with Labor, the Greens want the government to implement the Truck Action Plan to remove heavy vehicles from local streets in the city’s inner west.
“The Truck Action Plan has been under review for 18 months and the Baillieu Government has not developed a rail freight target,” Hartland says.
“The state budget is on May 1 so we want to make sure the premier knows that he can no longer ignore the west and must allocate funding for the Truck Action Plan and rail freight.”
Hartland says more than 21,000 trucks travel on streets in the inner west each day and that the freight task is set to double by 2020.
“The government is simply ignoring this growing problem and the community are sick of it,” she says.
“We’re talking about a health problem, an environmental problem, a roads problem and a community amenity problem that the government has a choice about. They can let it get even worse or they can allocate money in the budget.”
