Complete Disinterest in Providing Safety for Local Road Users

The quote (above) from North East Link (NEL)'s CEO was in response to concerns I had expressed about the major design change in Bulleen in early 2022: putting the northerly ramps to/from the main NEL tunnels at Thompsons Road, instead of the original (publicly scrutinised) plan to locate the ramps at Greenaway Street, near Manningham Road. The two very different plans are shown on the page 'The Wrong Design for Bulleen'.

When the successful bidding consortium offered this cheaper, yet fundamentally flawed design blunder in Bulleen, North East Link, the Major Transport Infrastructure Authority and the Victorian State (Labor) Government accepted it without any effective technical scrutiny (It may have been scrutinised, but as these pages show, any such scrutiny was either grossly inadequate, or ignored). Following this acceptance, the approach taken by these three government entities has been to tough it out and refuse to engage in any meaningful way, to either:

• have the major design change in Bulleen reviewed or reversed, or 

• consider any minor design changes that will improve safety (while still retaining the major design change)

Secrecy (through confidentiality agreements signed by contractors and consultants) is a major weapon used by North East Link and the government to avoid any technical scrutiny.

Here are some of my first-hand experiences of how North East Link, the Major Transport Infrastructure Authority and the State Government have refused to engage in any meaningful way to address road safety design problems that I have identified.  Let's start at the top.

(2)  Earlier Experience with Bureaucratic Disinterest

It is important to remember that my efforts to engage with North East Link were prompted by concerns about needless traffic crashes and traffic congestion:

• Firstly, due to the relocation of the arterial connection ramps in Bulleen, from Greenaway Street near Manningham Road, to Thompsons Road, and

• Secondly, whether or not that is changed, there are poor design elements along Bulleen Road and other roads that need to be corrected before they are built.

(2a) Dangerous Ramp Design off the Eastern Freeway

Andrew O'Brien (Traffic Engineer & Road Safety Engineer) was the first person to identify the dangers associated with a right hand exit to Bulleen Road off the freeway-to-freeway ramp linking Eastern Freeway (from the west) to North East Link (to the north). Andrew's concerns were dismissed by North East Link (NEL) at the public inquiry into the original design. NEL said, in effect, that because no Australian guidelines banned right hand exits freeway-to-freeway ramps, it was therefore acceptable. This was an early example of professional people associated with NEL acting beyond their own areas of expertise and making an assessment about an issue on which they knew very little. In my experience, Project Implementation people associated with large road infrastructure projects have a tendency to engage in 'box ticking exercises', rather than seeking adequate expertise and advice which might prompt a design change to improve the road's safely or effectiveness ("We've got a project to build. Done a road safety audit of the design? [tick]. Move on to the next box to tick"). I had the example at the Chandler Highway bridge duplication project in Fairfield where I provided the project office with an effective sign design (free of charge) to overcome a known direction signing problem. My recommendation (which cost no more) was ignored and subsequently new misleading signing was installed (see the details in 'Chandler Highway Bridge Project - an Example' in 'C. Why Project Managers Shouldn't Be Making Traffic Design Decisions' on the following page: The Oops! File >> Signs Can't Fix Poor Design).

I followed this up in November 2019 with a letter to North East Link, explaining why a right hand exit to Bulleen Road cannot be safely signed (with Direction signs), if the approach layout is not altered. I probably knew more about this than anyone else, as I have been on the committee responsible for Australia's Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices (the MUTCD, AS 1742) since 1984 and in 2019 we had just completed a major revision of Part 15 of the MUTCD on Direction Signs. I was the Drafting Leader for this revision.

As an aside (in another example of bureaucratic disinterest), in the FIVE YEARS since AS 1742 Part 15 was published in 2019, the traffic signing experts at the state Department of Transport and Planning (formerly VicRoads) have not been able to get the resources or funding (in the order of a meagre $50,000) to update the Victorian direction signing supplement to AS 1742 Part 15 and bring it into line with the 2019 national standard. This is despite Victoria and all other states and territories agreeing to the 2019 updated national standard. This means that all the direction signs on North East Link have been or are being designed to an out-of-date Victorian signing standard which is riddled with inconsistencies, over-complications and other problems of ineffectiveness. What does this say about the Department of Transport and Planning's priorities, when $26 billion can be committed to an enormous road project, but $50,000 could not be found to ensure that the major direction signing on this project (and all other major projects) is the most effective possible?  Poor direction signing leads to driver uncertainty, which leads to last minute decisions, which leads to crashes. An illustration of the problems with the current (outdated) Victorian standard is the 'Stud Road' sign shown under "Basic Rules About Traffic Signs that Road Designers Need to Know, 1. ACT EARLY" on the following page: The Oops! File >> Signs Can't Fix Poor Design).

For a copy of my November 2019 letter to North East Link about the Bulleen Road Exit, November 2019 - Click here. It can be seen that in his response, the North East Link CEO advised "During the development of the Reference Design, the layout has been reviewed by an external road safety auditor and has been subject to a safe systems audit." [tick]. I later spoke to the road safety auditors and asked whether, in the design they had been asked to audit, they had picked up that it was impossible to safely sign the proposed right hand exit to Bulleen Road (with the required direction signs). They told me that 'No', they had not identified that issue.

(2b) Responses - or lack of responses - to problems identified with the changed May 2022 design

By April 2022, houses in Ilma Court, Bulleen were being demolished. This was not required by the original Reference Design and there was no publicly available information on what designs were being changed and what was happening in Bulleen. The October 2021 announcement of design changes with the winning bid were quite detailed in the area of Greensborough Road (in the northern section of the project) but in Bulleen there was only a general comment about a 'Simplified Manningham Road interchange'.

Then, as described on the web page The Wrong Design for Bulleen, the details about the major change to the North East Link design in Bulleen were made available in a secretive way in May 2022 when they were shown on urban design and landscaping plans. As I put it in History Repeats Itself - Part 2, on the North East Link introductory page, "Bulleen’s future congestion and crash problems stem from the audacious removal of the major interchange near Manningham Road in 2022, shifting it to Thompsons Road. North East Link call this ‘a simplified Manningham Road interchange’ that will ‘remove 14,700 vehicles a day from Bulleen Road’. What they don’t mention is the increased traffic on Thompsons Road and the extra traffic that will continue to use Rosanna Road because access from Heidelberg to the tunnels under the Yarra (via Banksia Street) has been abandoned." This is yet another example of disinterest in the safety of local people - both in Bulleen and in Heidelberg/Rosanna: Bulleen Road (a divided road with almost no direct driveways) is much more capable of taking higher volumes of traffic than is Thompsons Road or Rosanna Road. 

Critically, these major changes to the NEL project were not published as road design plans. They were only provided in the 'Urban Design and Landscape Plan' published on 11 May 2022. Effectively, the changes were hidden in plain sight. Nothing to see here - it's just about landscaping!

So I had my say, setting out in detail my concerns about the altered design for North East Link in Bulleen. 

To see my advice to North East Link on the design problems with the changed plans (sent through the Engage Victoria website), Click here.

Surprise, surprise - I never received a response.

So on 26th August 2022, I emailed Duncan Elliott, CEO of North East Link. You can see my email here. In it I sought "a meeting with senior design and management people at NELP to discuss the design and operational issues that I have raised."

After a follow up email by me, I received a letter from Duncan Elliott on 13 September 2022 advising me to contact the 'Precinct Lead' at Spark, the consortium responsible for designing and building the central section (including the tunnels) and preparing the concept designs for the northern part and the (southern) Eastern Freeway/Thompsons Road part. This, of course, was an exercise in bureaucratic bulldusting, as I had requested a meeting with North East Link (the decision makers) and they now referred me to one of their consultants. As a different consultant involved with another section of North East Link later told me, suggestions/recommendations/requests for design changes at North East Link NEVER go UP the food chain (in the direction of sub-consultant > consultant > main contractor > North East Link). If that were to happen, the message would come back down the line "It's not your job to suggest changes. There is a (2021) reference design. Stick to it and get it to work (with the inference being: otherwise we'll find someone else who can do that)".

Nonetheless, I did contact the 'Precinct Lead' at Spark and she tried and tried to arrange a meeting with the designers, but they always had something else to do. I eventually thanked her and suggested that she stop wasting her time (and mine). They were never going to meet me - and if we had met they would not be in a position to offer design changes - or show me any detailed plans.

In July 2023 I wrote to Kevin Devlin, CEO of the Major Transport Infrastructure Authority (MTIA), seeking a meeting with him. I did this at the suggestion of someone who regarded Mr Devlin to be a sound operator. Despite a follow up email I never did receive a reply from him. 

But on 21st September I was contacted by a person in the 'Communications and Stakeholder Relations' section of North East Link, who was wanting to organise a meeting with me (as a result of my contacting Kevin Devlin). And so on 20th October 2023 I had a meeting at Watsonia with NEL's head of communications, plus a graduate in the communications section and a relatively junior engineer with NEL. They are all lovely people. But no one was in a position to agree to any design changes. No one offered to take any of my suggestions back to someone who had the authority to make changes. Discussions had to be based on the published May 2022 Urban Design and Landscape Plan, as no more detailed or more up to date plans were brought to the meeting. Options for the Bulleen Road exit off the Eastern Freeway were discussed, but only preliminary sketch options were shown (and not provided to me). I do recall mentioning that on Banksia Street there needs to be a separate left turn 'deceleration/storage' lane into The Greenery plant nursery, to avoid rear end (nose-to-tail) crashes due to the likely heavy volume of vehicles in the left hand lane that will be heading to the southbound tunnel ramp just after the Yarra River bridge. The young engineer commented that no one involved with the project had identified that as an issue before. This is another fine example of “Some of the best engineers, designers and builders from across Australia and around the world have worked for years to refine the design of North East Link to ensure it delivers the best outcome for the whole community” - yet somehow issues that are obvious to an experienced eye get missed, or are dismissed as 'outside the scope of the project'.

Since then the head of communications has been helpful in getting minor operational issues addressed as work continues. But she effectively acts as a 'gatekeeper'; there is never an opportunity to talk directly with any of the project's technical people.

These events have been the prequel to my question and subsequent email to the Minister for Transport Infrastructure in February 2024 - and his response six months later that avoided addressing any of my concerns (see '(1) Danny Delays Doing . . .', above).

Since early 2024 I have chosen to limit my communication with North East Link (MRPV) to those issues that directly affect my travels around Bulleen. On other matters it is evident that no one is listening and no one wants to know. So I have chosen not to advise North East Link about all the silly and potentially dangerous things I am showing on my web page 'Take Me Home, Thomb'ln Road'. That is also why, in April 2024, when I saw the potentially dangerous situation in Bulleen Road, on the approach to Manningham Road from the north, I chose not to alert NEL about it (The new traffic signals facing north had no mast arm (cantilvered) traffic lights out over the road, despite there being six approach lanes and the signals on the left being offset, well back from the kerb. Nor does this approach have any island (e.g. between the through lanes and turning lanes) on which extra traffic signals could be placed, so they are in clear view). I knew the layout that was opened to traffic would greatly increase the risk of drivers going through a red light and having crashes. But no one is listening and no one would want to know.