Appendix E Community Engagement Report
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Appendix E Community Engagement Report February 2018 Document title COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT REPORT AUGUST - OCTOBER 2017 Authorised and published by the Victorian Government, 1 Treasury Place, Melbourne North East Link will finally connect the missing link in Melbourne’s road network between the M80 Ring Road and the Eastern Freeway or EastLink. This report provides a summary of community feedback received from August - October 2017 about early strategic planning work for the project. The information in this report is based on data collected from community members who chose to be involved in engagement activities for North East Link. This report is intended to provide a high-level analysis of the most prominent themes and issues. While it’s not possible to include all the detailed feedback we received, feedback that was relevant to the project has been provided to technical experts for review and consideration. Feedback that is relevant to future stages of the project (i.e. road design) will be kept and considered at a later stage. Contents 1. Project overview .............................................................................................2 2. Community engagement overview ................................................................3 2.1 What we asked communities ..................................................................4 2.2 How we let people know about the project.............................................5 2.3 Who we heard from .................................................................................6 2.4 Summary of key findings .........................................................................7 3. Feedback on the project objectives and principles ........................................9 3.1 Feedback on the project objectives ......................................................10 3.2 Feedback on the project principles ......................................................14 4. Feedback on the corridor findings so far .....................................................19 4.1 Traffic .....................................................................................................21 4.2 Future proofing ......................................................................................23 4.3 Trucks .....................................................................................................25 4.4 Tolls ........................................................................................................27 4.5 Community ............................................................................................28 4.6 Environment ..........................................................................................30 4.7 Tunnels ...................................................................................................31 4.8 Public and active transport ...................................................................32 4.9 Cost ........................................................................................................33 4.10 Engagement ..........................................................................................34 5. Next steps .....................................................................................................35 Appendices Appendix A - Corridor options Appendix B - Respondents by suburb 3,000+ We received more than 3,000 pieces of feedback during our August-October community engagement. NORTH EAST LINK COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT REPORT AUGUST-OCTOBER 2017 1 1. Project overview The Victorian Government North East Link has been talked about for more than 50 years and is has committed to building long overdue. Community engagement is North East Link – the missing In 2016 Infrastructure Victoria playing an important role in link in Melbourne’s freeway identified it as Victoria’s priority road shaping early strategic planning project. network. for North East Link. The Victorian Government established the North East Link In August 2017 we released Authority to oversee all aspects of four potential corridors and project development and delivery, starting with recommending a project asked communities for feedback corridor and developing a business on how we are planning the case. project and investigating how Expert engineering, environmental the corridors might perform and social investigations are in fixing the missing link in underway to determine a corridor for North East Link, with a focus Melbourne’s freeway network. on protecting existing urban areas and minimising impacts on the environment. The four potential corridor options for North East Link (More detail is in Appendix A) 2 NORTH EAST LINK COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT REPORT AUGUST-OCTOBER 2017 2. Community engagement overview There is no existing road reserve for North East Link Engagement timeline and no easy solution to fixing the missing link. Each Community travel and values survey corridor has opportunities May - July 2017 and challenges. We asked people how they travel around and through the north- During our early strategic planning east, what they value about their neighbourhoods and their views we checked with communities to on improving transport infrastructure. make sure we had identified the right What we heard helped to inform some of our strategic planning problems North East Link needs to work including the project objectives and principles. A report is solve, and what it needs to achieve. online at northeastlink.vic.gov.au/publications We also asked communities to help us better understand and balance different opportunities and challenges Project planning and corridor options so that we can recommend the corridor to Government that engagement delivers the best solution for local August - October 2017 communities, Melbourne and Victoria. On 7 August 2017 we shared four potential corridors and our It’s our job as a team of technical early analysis work with communities. We asked if our technical specialists to recommend a corridor studies were looking at the right things, and for information for North East Link. However, that could help us better understand and balance different communities will have helped us to opportunities and challenges. get there by letting us know what is important to them and whether our strategic planning considered the Report back to communities right things. November 2017 This report forms the next part of our engagement with communities; reporting back what we heard from August – October 2017 and how your feedback has helped shape strategic planning for North East Link. Corridor announcement and business case Our next step will be to recommend a project corridor to the Victorian Government by the end of the year. Once we have a project corridor, there will be lots more opportunities for communities to get involved. This will be around areas like urban design, walking and cycling connections and the environment. We’ll also commence detailed planning and impact assessments. Communities will be able to give more feedback as part of this process. You can read more at planning.vic.gov. au/environment-assessment/what-is-the-ees-process-in- victoria NORTH EAST LINK COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT REPORT AUGUST-OCTOBER 2017 3 2.1 What we asked communities from August to October We asked communities to give us feedback on two areas of our strategic planning work. 1: The project objectives and principles 2: Findings about the corridors Why we asked for feedback Why we asked for feedback The project objectives and principles guide how we are We shared the early findings about the corridors planning for North East Link. to see if our studies to investigate how they might perform were looking at the right things. The objectives tell us what North East Link must achieve. The principles tell us what impacts we should It was important for us to do this early on so we could minimise. incorporate community feedback into the work we are still completing to recommend a project corridor. The corridor we recommend to Government will be the one that best meets the project objectives and What we asked principles. • What do you think of what we’ve found so far? What we asked • Have we missed anything important? • How important are the project objectives and • What more work do you think we need to do? principles to you? • Is there anything else you think we should include? Why not just Through our early discussions with communities, we heard it was important to people that have a vote? we recommend the project corridor using a process informed by technical studies and analysis rather than a popular vote or a poll. Many people did choose to send us votes, or to tell us which corridor they want. Where possible we looked at the reasons people preferred one corridor over another to understand what mattered to them and why. We didn’t record votes. 4 NORTH EAST LINK COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT REPORT AUGUST-OCTOBER 2017 2.2 How we let people know about the project How we let people • We posted a newsletter to 308,000+ homes and businesses in the project area know about the • We sent an email to our 5,500+ email newsletter subscribers opportunity to get involved... • We talked to the media and attracted TV, radio and newspaper coverage • We reached 1.2M people through Facebook and Twitter posts and advertising • We advertised in six local newspapers with a combined readership of 267,855+ people • We advertised on five major radio stations and on 13 mobile roadside billboards • We hosted 12 community drop-in information sessions in Balwyn North, Bulleen, Eltham, Greensborough,