Gravel gripes

By Kog Ravindran
BARRICADES will be installed to stop tradies and residents hooning along a gravel road in Pakenham’s Blue Horizon Estate.
Residents said that a gravel section of a road on the estate are being wrecked by construction workers who are driving too fast on the street.
They also said that local residents were driving irresponsibly on the road and causing more damage.
Bek Morgan said that children in the street were vulnerable to the reckless beaviour.
“A lot of the drivers laugh and think it’s hilarious, but I’m worried for the safety of my kids and other kids who live in the area,” she said.
“We have a lot of young families around here and I know that people are worried to let their kids outside to play and ride their bikes.”
Ms Morgan, who runs a business from home, said that tradesmen are often hooning down her street in order to get to various construction sites around the estate.
“They’ve come really close to taking out some of the cars in the street,” she said.
“I understand that they’re trying to get to work but a lot of them just floor it and their trucks fish tail sometimes.”
As a result, she said that it had become unsafe for her to walk her kids to school.
The introduction of barricades comes in response to complaints made by several locals who said the situation was “beyond a joke”.
Ms Morgan said she believed hoons had revelled in the gravel road and as a result have made a mess of neighbouring driveways.
“It was OK in the summer, but now that it’s winter and raining all the time, it gets very muddy and quite disgusting,” Ms Morgan said.
Cardinia Council spokesman Paul Dunlop said that the barricades would be installed to block access to the gravel road by the end of the week.
“The proposed treatment will discourage both normal motorists and the hoon element from using these streets as a shortcut,” Mr Dunlop said.
He said that the developer’s contractor had also been asked to clean the existing road surface to remove any loose gravel caused by the reckless driving.