Western Port Ward residents left behind in Bass Coast road safety review
Bass Coast Shire Council's ‘What would make Bass Coast Roads Safer’ initiative has scheduled face-to-face community drop-in sessions for Cowes in the Island Ward and Wonthaggi in the Bunurong Ward but appears to have snubbed Western Port Ward entirely.
WESTERN Port Ward residents of Bass Coast Shire are demanding a fairer share of infrastructure investment accusing council of ignoring pressing local needs.
The council’s new engagement initiative, ‘What would make Bass Coast Roads Safer’, has sparked a fierce community backlash. While council officials scheduled face-to-face community drop-in sessions for Cowes in the Island Ward and Wonthaggi in the Bunurong Ward, the Western Port Ward was entirely excluded from the in-person consultation line-up.
Locals say this exclusion has left them feeling sidelined despite facing severe, widespread infrastructure decay. Local motorists have reported a massive surge in potholes, describing heavily used state-managed routes like the Bass Highway and South Gippsland Highway as being in a state of dangerous neglect.
Their anger has been further intensified by the immediate failure of recently completed civil works. A prominent stretch of the Grantville-Glen Alvie Road, which underwent extensive council-funded repairs just a few months ago, is already breaking up.
Despite workers returning for another round of intensive patching, the road surface continues to crumble. The rapid decline has prompted ratepayers to question the quality, oversight, and longevity of council engineering projects.
Rob Parsons, a community representative on the Grantville Quarries Reference Group, voiced the growing resentment of the rural population. "Western Port Ward isn't asking for special treatment; we're asking for a fair share of attention and road funding," Mr Parsons said.
"Farmers move stock, heavy machinery, and fresh produce on these roads every single day. School buses run on them, emergency services depend on them, and local families have absolutely no alternative routes."
Mr Parsons noted that the visual omission of their region from the safety campaign spoke volumes to the community. "Cowes got a drop-in session and so did Wonthaggi. Western Port Ward was left off the face-to-face consultation altogether. It makes residents feel like their safety is a secondary priority," he said.
The timing of the exclusion is particularly tough for Western Port residents, who contend with heavy industrial traffic from local quarries alongside regular agricultural and commuter vehicles.
Community groups are now calling on the council to urgently schedule an extraordinary consultation session in the ward and provide a transparent audit of recent road maintenance contracts.
Bass Coast Shire Council has maintained that residents can still provide feedback online, but locals argue that digital forms are no substitute for looking decision-makers in the eye when local lives are at risk on failing roads.
“If council genuinely wants to hear about road safety, it should be talking directly to the people who use our rural network,” the local residents complained. "The Grantville-Glen Alvie Road was rebuilt only months ago and it's already breaking up. Council keeps sending crews back to patch what it just laid down. Ratepayers are entitled to ask whether the specification was wrong, the workmanship was substandard, or both.
"Council tells us road lifespan is determined by traffic volume rather than speed. That's a convenient line when new works fail early, because it lets everyone off the hook. It doesn't explain why a resurfaced road is crumbling inside a year.
The farmers at Kernot claim they are past the point where another online survey would feel like engagement. They want to know why past works have failed, who signed them off, and what will be different this time.
Amid the road maintenance challenges, questions have also been raised about the motivations behind widespread speed limit reductions. Council has progressively lowered speed limits to 40km/h and 50km/h across the shire.
"Reducing a speed limit may be justified in specific circumstances, but it isn't a substitute for maintaining the road. A deteriorating surface doesn't become safer simply because the traffic on it is slower. If council can't maintain the surface, the answer is to fix the surface.”
According to Bass Coast Shire, traffic volume, rather than vehicle speed remains the primary factor used to calculate and determine the useful lifespan of a road surface.
Local farmers are demanding swift accountability for past planning failures rather than further workshops, arguing that poor infrastructure maintenance and restrictive new limits punish drivers instead of fixing the core safety hazards.
