Warrnambool and Moyne councils have joined forces to pressure the state government to get moving on the planned $60 million Princes Highway upgrade.
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Preliminary plans detailing the duplication of a seven-kilometre stretch from the Illowa Road turn-off to Southern Cross Road have been released by Warrnambool mayor Tony Herbert and Moyne mayor Mick Wolfe.
They are now seeking urgent meetings with the state Department of Transport to get the project started after the Federal Government committed $60 million to the project in May during the election campaign.
"Now it's time to get going and start the work," Cr Herbert said.
"We're launching the concept plans that show very clearly how it can be done and hope, that we can now work with the State Government to get going with it.
"We can't wait around any longer. We need it to happen now."
Cr Wolfe said the reason the proposed work on this stretch of Princes Highway West needed to be prioritised was because of its very high traffic volumes.
"We have 15,000 vehicles using this stretch of road every day. That's the highest volume of traffic outside of Geelong, that is currently battling with mostly single-lane access," he said.
Cr Wolfe said that 11 per cent of the traffic was heavy vehicles.
"That's almost 1600 heavy vehicles on that stretch every day, along with thousands of other vehicles, all trying to navigate a poor quality road - and speed restrictions - with very few opportunities to overtake safely," he said.
"It just has to be fixed."
The Princes Highway West Action Alliance spokesman Trevor Greenberger said it had taken the initiative of moving forward with the design phase in a bid to encourage both the Victorian and Federal Governments to start the work.
He said the mayors were now seeking urgent meetings with senior Department of Transport staff to try and progress the concept plans to working drawings, ready for implementation.
"We know we've got the $60 million, we now have the design concept and we're extremely keen to work with the government to see these long overdue works finally come to fruition," Mr Greenberger said.
"We hope this potential design might be the catalyst to finally start some action."
After the election, Member for Wannon Dan Tehan said the federal government wanted to get cracking on the project and offered the state government the option of using the federal money to kickstart the project so the state could delay chipping in its 20 per cent until the end of the works program.
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