By Brendan Rees
Impatient drivers are cutting over a footpath to save painful minutes longing for the traffic lights to change while stuck behind a line of cars at a busy Cranbourne intersection.
According to Peter Tuckett, owner of Tyrepower, “desperate” motorists were driving across the nature strip at the front of his store to turn left from Camms Road into High Street.
“They mount the curb and go around the corner,” he said. “It’s quite dangerous especially at peak hour.
“The worst times are school times about nine o’clock in the mornings and about 3-3.30 in the afternoons.
“You would be crazy to go home at four o’clock,” he added.
Mr Tuckett said his staff could also take up to 10 minutes to go around a small block when test driving vehicles.
“It just slows down the process of test driving cars.”
In the case of Nicole Pickett, she says traffic is so bad she avoid using the road at all costs.
“The traffic is a nightmare,” she says. “It’s bumper to bumper.”
“If you’re caught behind a bus or two you don’t get through the lights, you sit through a couple of cycles.
“You cannot cross the road safely,” she added.
Ms Pickett said traffic can bank up to the train line where motorists can wait up to 15 minutes when the boom gates are down.
She said her husband has resorted to catching a bus to Cranbourne train station from the Hunt Club estate.
Lauren McCarthy says in the 20 years she has lived in Casey this is the “worst I’ve seen the roads.”
“It’s just frustrating the delays,” adding traffic can bank up for kilometres on Camms Road.
“You restrict yourself from going out at certain times, only if you have to,” she said.
Luckily, she says, her kids are older so she doesn’t have to do a school run: “I would be dreading it; they would be walking to school.”
In August, a long-awaited right-turn signal on Camms Road for drivers turning onto South Gippsland Highway opened by VicRoads.
