Increasing traffic on Melbourne's roads is preventing VicRoads from effectively clearing up obstructions after accidents
By Ruza Zivkusic-Aftasi | October 18, 2013
Increasing traffic on Melbourne’s roads is preventing VicRoads from effectively clearing up obstructions after accidents.
VicRoads has failed to meet its accident response time of 50 per cent last year, recording a clearing rate of 46.6 per cent of incidents within 15 minutes.
Its Road Operations Acting Director Nicholas Fisher says the time it takes to clear an incident depends on several factors such as the number of vehicles involved, surrounding access and traffic levels, injuries and the availability of tow vehicles.
“While the rate is slightly below the annual target of 50 per cent, it is important to note that this clearance rate is measured over a 24 hour period and includes the eight hours each day during which an on-call service is in operation,” Fisher says.
“The decline in this figure over four years reflects the increase in traffic over that period, making access to incidents more time consuming.”
VicRoads’ incident response team operates primarily on the freeway network between 6am and 10pm Monday to Friday.
An on-call service is in operation outside those hours.
VicRoads has attended over 14,500 incidents during peak times during the past two years.
