Inverloch led down a one-way street residents claim

WITH a decision on one-way traffic along Surf Parade in Inverloch unlikely to be made before June local residents have claimed the town was misled by Bass Coast Shire Council.

Michelle Gardiner presented a petition to council at its last meeting signed by 772 people expressing their concern over the proposed change to one-way traffic change from Ozone Street to Goroke Street.

Ms Gardiner said Bass Coast Shire Council initially asked Inverloch how it wanted the final section of the Surf Parade shared path built, and of 1,636 submissions 73 per cent chose two-way traffic with parking.

In May 2024 council voted for one-way traffic instead according to Ms Gardiner.

Surf Parade runs along the Inverloch foreshore, and the road reserve is council land.

The coastal reserve is Crown land governed by state legislation and administered by DEECA. Due to concerns about erosion along the coast council was advised any future design had to stay within the road reserve. After further community consultation in 2023 residents were asked to choose between one-way traffic with parking or two-way traffic without parking.

According to Ms Gardiner the result was inconclusive. A petition of 564 signatures tabled at the December 2023 council meeting called on council to reject both options and reinstate the 2019 community choice.

Three options were submitted to DEECA in April 2024.

“The three options submitted by council were reviewed by DEECA and given that all these options are contained within the road reserve and therefore do not impact the adjoining foreshore reserve, DEECA does not have a preferred option,” said Ms Gardiner.

“The community was kept in the dark,” she said.

The third option was a hybrid, two-way traffic with parking at four intermittent slow points. All three options had been designed using IDM standard dimensions with carriageway widths broader than the planning scheme requires.

“Council’s own traffic modelling ruled the hybrid out for poor traffic performance and insufficient parking. The constraint was not the coastal reserve; it was a design fault  that left no room for a solution. The community never saw it,” Ms Gardiner said.

“June 2026 is the time to get it right,” she said.

For years, the community has asked the right questions and not been given the full picture. At each step, a door closed sometimes without explanation. More than 1,300 residents petitioned across two rounds of consultation.

Formal submissions were lodged and a community-run website coordinated further objections directly to councillors.

Ms Gardiner has maintained that all the community wants is a shared path, two-way traffic and parking, done right. “After all these years, the community deserves a council that thinks outside the square and delivers what it chose.”