Victorian Transport Association chief executive officer Peter Anderson said the new road was necessary to redress the “absolutely ridiculous” status quo, which sees trucks diverted through Melbourne when travelling between regional centres.

“It’s not something that’s on the radar of the politicians but it needs to be, they need to understand that regional centres need to be connected,” he said.

“At the moment we can’t go from the Western Freeway through to the Hume Freeway without going through Melbourne so we need a connector.”

Speaking ahead of a regional transport safety forum the VTA is hosting in Bendigo on Thursday, Mr Anderson said the ring road would also reduce road hazards by diverting larger trucks away from smaller “secondary” arterials.

“How do we keep those bigger trucks on those bigger roads? We create those bigger roads,” he said.

“It would improve productivity, it would improve the standard of living, it would decrease the element of risk, improve safety on the roads – there’s a lot of benefits to it.”

Maryborough-based Central Victorian Transport director Rod Brown called the current situation in which truck drivers travelling across the state were diverted through Melbourne as “just crazy”.

“For many year’s I’ve promoted that there should be what I call a central Victorian ring road, which would, let’s say, emanate from Geelong and give Ballarat a north-south bypass, because it already has east-west,” he said.

“It would head north and across to Maryborough to the north of Bendigo to give Bendigo an east-west bypass because it would link up to the Calder Highway, which is effectively the north-south bypass and come out at Violet Town and that would take an enormous amount of traffic out of Melbourne.”

La Trobe University senior lecturer in urban and regional planning, Andrew Butt, said while ring roads on the outskirts of major cities often became drivers of growth along the road corridor rather than successfully diverting traffic, this phenomenon could prove beneficial in a regional context.

“In some respects it would probably have some of the same consequences but we might see them as being reasonably good ones, if that’s about decentralising the development of industry that’s presently clustered in Melbourne then maybe that’s not such a bad idea,” he said.

Dr Butt said another potentially negative consequence of ring roads – diverting traffic from small towns whose economy is reliant on passing motorists – could also prove a positive for regional centres.

“Once you go a long way away from cities sometimes it can become quite disadvantageous because it takes away your passing trade,” he said.

“[But] in places like Bendigo or Ballarat and other places close enough to large centres, getting traffic out is actually an advantage as it frees up the middle of town and it makes them more livable.”

Maryborough truckie Rod Brown said the road would benefit rural and regional businesses through improved access to towns and cities outside Melbourne, which would also have flow on benefits for metropolitan road users.

“Of course it’s probably a 30-year project but at the end of the day if we don’t plan it’ll never change,” he said.

“The focus is always on addressing traffic issues in Melbourne but you’ve got to address the reasons most of the traffic is there.”

Roads Minister Luke Donnellan said the government would continue to work with industry groups to ensure efficient connections and routes for trucks.

“That's why we've been making 30 kilometres of the Midland Highway between Benalla and Barjarg safer, new overtaking lanes and upgrading the Midland Highway/Pyrenees Highway Castlemaine intersection,” he said.

“We’re also upgrading and maintaining other freight routes because we know how vital they are to get goods to market.”