By GEORGIA WESTGARTH
A GRAVEL section of Ballarto Road in Clyde is verging on ‘un-drivable’ and the City of Casey isn’t answering distressed resident Louise Hunter’s calls for help.
The Ballarto Road home owner and mother of two said the gravel stretch of about 900 metres is causing dusty havoc and needs to be graded weekly.
“It’s disgusting the whole car shakes and you have to drive at five kilometres per hour or else you’ll end up driving sideways and off the road,” Ms Hunter said.
“I have a black car and it’s white.”
Ms Hunter has lived on the gravel part of Ballarto Road for 10 years and said that Casey’s skyrocketing population has mean that the road has got worse in the past five years.
“It was drivable back then but it’s not now and with Clyde Primary School traffic and people cutting through it’s become dangerous,” Ms Hunter explained.
The gravel section of the road currently gets graded by the council every three weeks but Ms Hunter said it doesn’t last long.
“The dust is absolutely shocking.
“Another resident waters his own section to try and keep it down and that’s why the council dumped water on it last week between grating it,” she said.
Ms Hunter has been calling the City of Casey for many years regarding the state of the road and said she felt ignored this week.
“I’ve called three times in less than a week and nothing’s been done,” she said.
“Generally, it gets grated within a couple of days of calling them and realistically it needs to be graded once a week.”
Ms Hunter said the road was a constant stress for residents and that she would like to see plans for a bitumen road as soon as possible and a temporary hard surface laid down in the interim.
“At school times it’s bumper to bumper and I’ve been close to getting hit by a car driving very fast around a corner and going sideways,” Ms Hunter said.
“From all the corrugation, drivers who are just cutting through and unaware of the state of the road drive too fast and bounce around and it’s so easy to lose control.”
The gravel section of the road is due for its next three week grading on Friday 23 October.
The City of Casey was unavailable for comment.
