This level crossing has been fast tracked for removal – one of 22 projects that will make the Pakenham Line level crossing-free by 2025.

We're closing the level crossing and building a new road bridge connecting Progress Street to Fowler Road.

The road bridge will provide businesses in this busy industrial precinct with safer access to South Gippsland Highway. The Fowler Road and South Gippsland Highway intersection will also be upgraded with new traffic lights to improve traffic flow, ease congestion and improve safety.

Completion of the Metro Tunnel and a level crossing-free Pakenham Line by 2025 will make room for an additional 121,000 peak hour passengers along the Pakenham and Cranbourne lines every week. As there will soon be more trains running more often, we need to remove this level crossing now or there will be even longer boom gate down time in the future.

Improving safety in Dandenong

Removing all 8 level crossings in the City of Greater Dandenong will eliminate 5.6 hours of boom gate down time in the morning peak and make journeys safer for all road users.

The Level Crossing Removal Project is required to deliver a safe and functional outcome for the community. This factsheet outlines the safety assessments undertaken by the project and how they reflect the current design.

Refining the design

We've been refining the design in response to your feedback gathered in phase one and two of community consultation.

To make it easier and safer for you to move around the area:

• We’re upgrading Fowler Road with new indented parking. By removing on-street parking, we’re providing a greater drivable width compared with Progress Street, making it easier and safer for all road users.

Keeping vehicles safe and moving

We know heavy vehicle movements are important for local businesses.

In the early design phase, we undertook independent safety checks and traffic modelling around the Progress Street level crossing and Fowler Road to help understand and manage the potential impacts to local traffic.

We collected data on:

• traffic volumes
• vehicle classifications
• boom gate down time (Progress Street)
• vehicle turning movements.

Data is obtained through observation, which can involve manually counting cars, using automatic traffic counters and traffic monitoring cameras. We also source traffic data from local councils and the DTP.

Department of Transport and Planning require the road design to accommodate B-doubles as a minimum requirement. We’ve also completed analysis for large vehicles, including visibility and turning movement checks for 36m long A-doubles, 26m long B-doubles and 35m long B-triples.

We understand from our engagement there are instances of Over Size Over Mass (OSOM) loads that exceed these lengths. These have been accounted for in our safety and accessibility assessments.

We’ll continue work with the road management authorities at each stage of the project to ensure the project meets all relevant safety and accessibility requirements and that the new road bridge and intersection complies with design standards.

Changes to the way you travel

Extensive traffic analysis has been completed since 2019, including analysis of traffic movements post-COVID.

Further traffic modelling was also conducted to measure the average time (in minutes) vehicles would take to travel the existing routes, compared to the expected new routes at both AM and PM peaks.

These traffic assessments show that:

• Fowler Road and the new signalised intersection at South Gippsland Highway can accommodate the increased traffic and heavy vehicle movements once the new road bridge is open, to the satisfaction of the Department of Transport and Planning (DTP).
• Motorists intending to travel between Princes Highway and Nathan Road along the green route in either direction will experience an average of four minutes increase in travel time during peak traffic periods (AM and PM).
• Motorists intending to travel between Princes Highway and Nathan Road along the purple route in either direction will experience an average of one minute increase in travel time during peak traffic periods (AM and PM).
• Journey times for motorists travelling between South Gippsland Highway and Nathan Road along the orange route in either direction will be faster on average.
• Delays will be less on average for drivers travelling outside of peak periods.

This assessment does not consider additional boom gate down time as more trains run on the Pakenham Line.

As part of ongoing design, we'll work with the DTP to optimise sequencing of traffic lights on South Gippsland Highway and manage the broader network traffic flow to keep vehicles moving around the area. This includes DTP monitoring real time traffic conditions and adjusting traffic signals, as required.

Traffic monitoring will continue throughout the project.