Steve Irons (Swan, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak about Orrong Road, a main road in my electorate of Swan and a road notorious for delays. As is it stands, Orrong Road is currently the third most delayed road across the city of Perth. The traffic is delayed by 32.3 per cent and road users are travelling at an average speed of 40.6 kilometres per hour, despite it being a 70 kilometres per hour road. In short, Orrong Road is the sixth slowest road in the metropolitan area of Perth. In April this year I sent out a survey to approximately 13,000 people in my electorate of Swan, in the suburbs of Kewdale, Rivervale, Lathlain, Carlisle, Queens Park, East Cannington and Welshpool. I received almost 1,500 surveys back, and I'm sure the member for Ballarat would say that that's a pretty good response. Over 1,150 said that they supported the road being widened, and the rest supported upgrades to intersections. I see the member for Perth has just arrived, which is great timing because I've got him in my speech!

In 2010-11, Main Roads Western Australia wrote a report about the ways various intersections on Orrong Road could be upgraded as well as how these upgrades would be affected by future widening. Until earlier this year when the Orrong Road intersection with Archer Street in Carlisle and the intersection with Alexander Road in Rivervale received a $1.8 million upgrade through the Turnbull government's Black Spot Program, there had been no work done to remedy the traffic issues—lots of promise, but no work. Prior to these upgrades, there had been a combined total of 202 crashes from 1 January 2011 to 31 December 2015 at these two intersections, which are within 200 metres of each other. This was despite the Gillard government promising to upgrade the road when I faced the now member for Perth in an election back in 2010—another broken promise by the Gillard government. Look at the cute, young face—

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