Talk the Toll Down - Pledge your support

The CFA is calling for extensive upgrades to problem intersections along the Calder Alternate Highway after several collisions in recent weeks.Late last year the Fortuna group – which includes brigades from Bendigo, Golden Square, Eaglehawk, Kangaroo Flat, Huntly, Marong and Lockwood – voted unanimously to support “significant safety improvements” to the Calder Highway and Calder Alternate Highway intersection at Ravenswood and the Calder Alternate, Lockwood and Maryborough crossroads at Lockwood.Lockwood CFA captain Jamie Tatt said the situation hadn’t improved in the intervening months.This month the CFA, along with other emergency services, has attended two multiple vehicle accidents at the Calder/Calder Alternate and one at the Lockwood crossroads. “There seems to be too many accidents happening there on a regular basis,” Mr Tatt said. “It’s all our time, and its voluntary time too. It uses up all our manpower.“We are out there every couple of months, and there are plenty of accidents out there we don’t attend.”Mr Tatt said there were ongoing whisperings of planned work at the intersection but nothing substantial ever seemed to be done.“I heard they were going to spend $3 million and put a roundabout in at the crossroads.‘‘I don’t know when or if that is still happening,” he said.“There’s also talk of an overpass at Ravenswood.“Really the whole highway from Lockwood to Ravenswood needs to be upgraded but it’s a matter of not having the money.”Mr Tatt said it was tough on CFA volunteers who had to attend accidents in the same spot again and again.“I have been a member of the CFA for 35 years and I have been to my fair share of fatals at the crossroads,” he said. “There are a lot of near misses too, there’s always glass on the road.“You don’t know what to expect, you don’t know what you’re going to see,” he said.Other emergency services have their concerns too.SES’s north west community resilience coordinator Jo Mason said that while the SES could not comment on specific intersections, the service would push any initiative to reduce the road toll.“Any opportunity to upgrade roads that has an impact on the road toll is a positive one,” she said.“We see firsthand the impact of the road toll so we want to do anything we can to reduce that.”According to Bendigo police there have been six injury and 11 non injury collisions at the crossroads in the last five years.There have been seven injury collisions and two non injury collisions at the Calder Highway and the Calder Alternate Highway. This includes one fatality in 2009.