The Courier has said it many times before; Sturt Street is one of the great boulevards of Australia. A thoroughfare that speaks volumes about the prescience and the confidence of the leaders in an era that built a heritage city.
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At the same time in its modern manifestation there are few times when it appears better or more active with people than on that balmy January evening when some of the best athletes in the country converge on it to bring the heart of the CBD alive with racing and a carnival atmosphere.
Despite the predictable griping about road closures; the white-knuckle drivers having to take a one block diversion; the Road Nats criterium is the perfect synthesis of a modern celebration of sport, excited crowds and the rich past that gave Ballarat one of its most prized historical assets.
Little wonder then that VicRoads have trod so carefully in an attempt to solve another historical anomaly. The beautiful boulevard was never planned or built with high speed traffic in mind.
As the twentieth century progressed each age added its engineering or law solutions in an attempt to avoid the carnage even 60 km/hour lumps of moving steel can cause.
Traffic lights have progressed up the hill and are now mooted as one of the solutions to help fix the half dozen notorious Sturt Street crossovers which have seen so many crashes.
The common lament about bad drivers does not address the ubiquity of human error or the responsibility of bodies like VicRoads whose key purpose is to provide the best built solutions to avoid human tragedy.
Given the traffic volumes and burgeoning population, these aren’t problems that will go away.
READ MORE: How do we solve a problem like Sturt Street?
What is unavoidable is the simple rat-dash across Sturt Street at these intersections, beloved by so many from a quieter country-town time, will not be the same.
Whatever the feed back VicRoads gathers from the public in its attempt to reconcile this sentiment with its own safety objectives, it is certainly worth considering some of the bigger picture issues facing the CBD; namely how to get more people back on the street. People not cars.
That no doubt was one of the inspired visions of those who originally designed the magnificent streetscape.
