Residents of Queens Avenue in Caulfield East are stepping up their fight against the kilometer and vowing to “fight until the bulldozers come. “
For 30 years, Tamara de Silva has woken up to the sound of birds chirping in the trees across the road from her home in Melbourne’s south-east.
“Listening to the magpies and the lorikeets in the mornings, watching them playing around – it lifts your spirits,” she said.
In a few weeks, many trees common to birds will disappear and be cut down to build a kilometre-long motorcycle lane.
The road, which runs along Queens Avenue in Caulfield East on the edge of Caulfield Racecourse, was announced several years ago as part of the state government’s plans to remove a rail crossing at Neerim Road and Glen Huntly, on the Frankston Exercise Line.
As a component of the plan, first reported through The Age, the avenue’s narrow motorcycle lanes would be replaced by a shared path for motorcycles and pedestrians, connecting the new Glen Huntly station with Caulfield station and Djerring Trail to the north, as well as Ormond, Bentleigh. and McKinnon stations in the south.
But to create the new trail, it will be necessary to remove around 250 local and brought mature trees, adding several that are on the Glen Eira Council’s Register of Listed Trees. The government said each tree cut down would be replaced by two, within a 1. 5 km radius, most likely to be suckers.
De Silva called the plan “absolute madness, madness and bureaucracy gone mad. “
“These are magnificent trees, 10 metres at least in height with a fantastic canopy in an urban area where tree cover is very limited,” she said. “They’ll be replaced with saplings that may not even survive.”
For several years, De Silva and other Queens Avenue residents have campaigned against the path they dub a “concrete wasteland”, plastering the trees with posters and submitting petitions to the council and MPs.
Now they are ramping up their efforts after hearing construction would begin in January.
“We plan to camp or have a picnic in the trees, in the minister’s office,” De Silva said. “We will fight until the bulldozers arrive. “
According to a new Level Crossing Removal Project (LXRP) fact sheet, the trees will be removed in early February and eventually replaced with more than 90 native trees as well as flowers and shrubs to “further enhance the biodiversity of the area”.
The council lost control of the land to the LXRP but has been involved in discussions on the design of the path.
Last year it agreed to the plan. But on Tuesday, the mayor, Anne-Marie Cade, changed her position in an open letter to the minister for transport infrastructure, Danny Pearson.
The letter states that “council election proposals for network allocation and participation have been consistently rejected through the LXRP. “
“The Council understands that LXRP needs to move forward on this task, but we cannot continue as long as LXRP continues to actively oppose viable innovations that would protect the tree canopy and does not appear willing to plan collaboratively with the council or the community. Cade wrote.
“We believe that, with some commitments and investments, this task can continue to be viable and successful. “
The crusade to save the trees was also supported by Caulfield MP and deputy leader of the Victorian Liberals, David Southwick, who said the government was “fit” by cutting down primary trees over the holidays.
“After learning that trees were being attacked lately, I wrote to Minister Danny Pearson asking him to save them,” Southwick said.
“There are tactics to create a cycle path and save the trees, but it seems that Allan’s Labour government is opting for the cheapest solution and, once again, ignoring local residents. “
Pearson’s office was contacted for comment.
A LXRP spokesperson said it had worked with the council for two years on the path, including at monthly meetings.
“The shared use trail in Glen Huntly is the missing link in this bike room and will create more safety for cyclists and get more cars off the road,” they said.
“Several options were considered for the shared use path and other alignments would have required even more tree removal or did not have the space required for a shared use path.”