Dear Supporter, Thank you for your showing your support for the Northern Option for VicRoads planned upgrade to the Western Highway. We have an opportunity that we can’t let slip by and we need your help! VicRoads has inexplicably allowed their permit for their proposed Southern route (Option 1) to LAPSE! This provides us with a narrow time window to encourage the Minister for Planning Richard Wynne to use his power and force VicRoads to upgrade the highway along the Northern route. We need your help please, by sending an email to Minister Wynne and his Chief of Staff Andrew Herington. Just copy the text below, and send it to: Richard.wynne@minstaff.vic.gov.au Andrew.herington@minstaff.vic.gov.au cc us at: freewayfiascoresponsegroup@outlook.com Dear Minister Wynne, Re: Western Highway Duplication Stage 2 B - request for fresh consideration. The permit for Stage 2B has lapsed, requiring fresh Ministerial approval. We wish to use this opportunity to achieve a better outcome for all road users, by all measures. We support the duplication of the highway but not the approach proposed by VicRoads. We request you exercise your statutory powers to initiate a fresh consideration of these works, taking into account the numerous changed circumstances and overwhelming new information since the permit was granted in 2013. VicRoads continues to ignore independent reports that question the validity of their Environmental Effects Statement. In addition to these reports, VicRoads has failed to identify trees of regional significance due to their size, local rarity and Aboriginal heritage. The Southern route also incurs the loss of greater areas of habitat for critically endangered species. The Southern route is longer, steeper, slower and more expensive to construct and is no safer. The preferred Northern route must be upgraded according to best practice guidelines including narrowest footprint (12m carriageway), as already used by VicRoads in completed sections of this duplication project. Yours sincerely, Supporter of KORS - Keep Original Route Supporters Fix Freeway Fiasco (KORS Inc.) is a community group of farmers, locals and concerned individuals, who oppose VicRoads’ planned “Option 1" to deviate from the current route of the Western Highway. This section of the Beaufort to Ararat project is called section 2B. We want to avoid a massive fresh cut across farmland and remnant habitat by using the existing highway and duplicating it with best practice road construction to keep the carriageway narrow, yet meet all safety requirements for all road users. We say Option 1 was based on a deficient Environmental Effects Statement (EES) in 2012. The EES had so much inaccurate and incomplete information that it was fatally flawed. It failed to take account of more than 1,500 Very Large Old Trees and Large Old Trees which were destroyed in 2014-2015 in the preceding Section, 2A. The same EES overlooked habitat for three Matters of National Environmental Significance (Golden Sun Moth, Striped Legless Lizard and a critically endangered Box Gum Grasslands Community) on Section 2B. VicRoads refuses to take account of this information. It disregarded the alternative Northern alignment that is clearly superior if built they way all new roads should be: using best practice. It is shorter, makes maximum use of the existing highway, so that it is far less expensive (more than $65 million less expensive) to acquire and construct, is faster to build and involves none of the environmental problems associated with Option 1. With no alternatives, we commenced legal action in the Supreme Court in October 2016. Then on 17 February we found out that a critical planning permit used by VicRoads has lapsed, so that the Section 2B works cannot continue. We are calling on the Minister for Planning, the Hon. Richard Wynne M.P. to use his statutory powers to convene a fresh Inquiry Panel to take into account the fresh environmental evidence which has been ignored by VicRoads since mid-2014. https://www.fixfreewayfiasco.com/ https://www.change.org/p/luke-donnellan-parliament-vic-gov-au-vicroads-save-24m-listen-to-the-people http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/western-highway-upgrade-suspended-over-vicroads-planning-blunder-20170221-guhuhg.html http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/lastminute-bid-to-save-significant-tree-in-path-of-western-highway-20170208-gu8w4n.html Thank you for your support and help, Mia Fix Freeway Fiasco (KORS Inc.) xoxoxoxo!