A DEDICATED bypass for Toodyay has been taken off the table by Main Roads, much to the surprise of the local Shire which claims it had no idea of the decision.
As far as the Shire of Toodyay was concerned, negotiations with Main Roads for the bypass had been and would be ongoing.
That was until Farm Weekly last week informed the Shire of comments made by Transport Minister Rita Saffioti in State parliament on October 20.
"Main Roads worked with the Shire of Toodyay, the asset owner, to upgrade the current route in June 2019," Ms Saffioti said.
"Given low incident statistics, low traffic numbers, investment in the Aglime Route 2, the significant construction cost, and previous planning that determined it was not viable, Main Roads has not revisited the previous planning for a bypass of Toodyay."
The Shire was shocked to find out planning has been canned in its entirety and president Rosemary Madacsi said at the very least it would have been courteous for Main Roads to sit down and have discussions with them, rather than letting them find out through the media.
"From 2001 through to 2016, Main Roads had deemed the bypass was necessary so I would like to know why, with increased traffic and other pressures, it's no longer needed," Ms Madacsi said.
The upgrade referred to by Ms Saffioti involved a temporary route through the town's residential streets which includes five right-hand bends which large trucks have to move onto the other side of the road, into oncoming traffic, to negotiate.
One of the roads on the route intersects the town's aged living home, meaning elderly people crossing the road have trucks to contend with.
On top of that, there is also the ongoing impact of noise to the residential area.
Ms Madacsi said there had been a number of State government decisions which had caused a large increase in traffic on those roads of much larger and heavier vehicles.
"The amount of traffic coming from the north east, via the Bindi Bindi road and the Toodyay townsite, was increased when the State government closed the Tier 3 rail line," she said.
"There is also strategic freight, which comes from Gingin and the Great Northern Highway, to access the Great Eastern Highway via Toodyay.
"We also have mining exploration and extractive industries in the area and all of that extra traffic is on our roads which are not designed for it, and which we do not receive the level of funding to upgrade them to the level they need to be at."
The issues with the temporary route were compounded in August when CBH Group announced it would be permanently closing its Bolgart receival site.
With CBH's Avon site the alternative preference for Bolgart farmers, it meant between 400 and 700 additional heavy haulage truck movements on Shire of Toodyay roads every harvest.
Growers heading to Avon have two options - use the Bejoording and Irishtown Roads which are not fit for trucks that size, or use the temporary route and take the bends through the town itself.
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"With the Bolgart bin having recently been closed by CBH, the feedback the Shire has received from farmers is that they have a preference to use the Avon receival site," Ms Madacsi said.
"There are so many issues with both of the existing routes and none of the pressures, be that agriculture or mining, are going anywhere."
From a farmer perspective, Bolgart grower Julian McGill said he would cross his fingers no accidents occurred on these roads which were not suited to take any more extra movements than what they already are.
"I was under the impression CBH would be liaising with Main Roads and the Shire of Toodyay to see what could be done and how they could help lobby towards getting that bypass done to make the route safer for everyone," Mr McGill said.
"Now that's off the table and with the continuing increase in size of our annual crops, I really don't see why CBH couldn't go back to the drawing board with the Bolgart bin and look at some way to get it operational.
"At least until Calingiri's expansion is completed which, with the environmental issues, could be years away."
For its part, CBH declined to comment any further on the matter of the Bolgart receival site.
Ms Saffioti also did not comment any further on the bypass and instead passed the buck to Main Roads, which repeated the same lines initially stated by Ms Saffioti in parliament.
The Nationals WA Member for Moore Shane Love originally raised the question of the bypass to Ms Saffioti and said it was clearly an issue which needed to be reexamined.
"I knew it had been put on the back burner, but I didn't know it was completely off the agenda until the minister said so," Mr Love said.
"It will be difficult given the constrained nature of the current so-called heavy vehicle route through Toodyay which has a series of difficulties weaving its way through residential streets.
"It's also disappointing that the local government, which has already spent its own money to make improvements to the existing route, hadn't been involved in the long term discussions with Main Roads about this issue."
