More than $30 million was set aside for the upgrade in this week’s state budget, $13.2 million more than initially predicted in the previous year’s budget.

Member for Bendigo East Jacinta Allan said the project had evolved over the past 12 months.

“Through the planning and development work that VicRoads has done this has become a bigger project,” she said.

“We want to duplicate Napier Street but we also want to do it properly and that’s why this is a much bigger project than what was first put forward.”

Local resident Jan Govett said traffic was a huge concern for people in the area, with safety a high priority.

“You see people really struggling to get across this road on foot,” she said.

“I did see children running across the other day, chasing a dog, which made me very nervous.”

Ms Govett had resigned herself to the fact that the works would be disruptive, but said parking was already an issue.

“The disruption will be bad for everyone while it happens, it always is with road works, you can't avoid it though, if you want to make improvements it’s what happens,” she said.

“The residents will no doubt be concerned [about parking] and the shopping centre here will be an interesting thing to see how they deal with that, because parking is always at a premium here. Quite often you'll park some distance away and walk back to the shops.”

Ms Allan acknowledged the works would cause inconvenience for locals, but said the extra money would make the trouble worthwhile. “If you’re going to cause that sort of disruption to the local community through the construction phase it’s clearly important to get it right, an that’s why I was pleased to go in to bat to get more funding for Napier Street because it’s a project that’s so important for Bendigo,” she said.

VicRoads’ Mal Kersting said the original $17 million estimated to upgrade Napier Street was based on providing limited localised intersection improvements and building new traffic lanes.

“The recent announcement of $30 million recognises the community’s vision shared with us during late 2015,” he said.