At the beginning of the year, Ballarat's top organisations got together to come up with a list of six city-changing priority projects - titled Ballarat: Now and Into the Future.
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The groups included the City of Ballarat, Committee for Ballarat, Commerce Ballarat, Federation University and ACU, Central Highlands Water, Grampians Health, Sovereign Hill, and Ballarat Regional Tourism.
Some of the projects have received funding already, or election promises, but with early voting set to open on November 14, The Courier's checking in on why these projects are so important to the city.
THE BIG SIX
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- Federation's 'university city' future to enliven central Ballarat
- Why we need a new recycling centre
- World-famous Ballarat attraction's plan to grow
- Focus on early help in community mental health proposal
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- OPINION: Investing in our city for decades to come
Every six months for the last year and a bit, your intrepid reporters from The Courier have gone out to Dyson Drive and Carngham Road, or DTC, to see what commute times are like in the morning.
Some of them head along Wiltshire Lane, others along La Trobe Street - that's where a lot of roadworks are happening - but others head north along Dyson Drive.
What we've noticed is that the roads are getting busier, with more drivers, more construction work, and more potholes.
So will the second stage of the Ballarat Link Road help this growing pain?
SEE A MAP OF THE PLAN HERE:
The City of Ballarat began advocating for the Link Road more than a decade ago, and was successful in completing the first stage in 2018.
That bit's a truck route connecting the Western Freeway to the Ballarat West Employment Zone - and its airport and rail connections - and then to Remembrance Drive.
The plan was then to duplicate Dyson Drive down to Carngham Road, well before all the development occurred, then extend a new road to the Glenelg Highway, and eventually to the Midland Highway near the Colac turnoff.
It's an ambitious plan, and right now, council estimates the cost is in the tens of millions of dollars, and only getting more expensive as time goes on.
Depending on who you ask, there are two main reasons why the project is so important.
One is the residential growth in the area, which is only set to accelerate as new estates begin construction, and council's new growth areas are rezoned.
As mayor Daniel Moloney has often said, if we're growing by 1000 people per year, that could be 1000 new cars on our roads, and given the lack of a bus network review (or potential Lucas train station?), they're all going to be commuting.
IN THE NEWS
Duplicating Dyson Drive, it's argued, would make life a little easier for residents on the western side of the city, providing a safer north-south connection.
The second big reason is getting trucks out of the CBD.
We've all been behind a sheep or cattle truck on Doveton Street, and perhaps having a fit-for-purpose north-south route would improve safety and efficiency for all drivers.
It would encourage businesses in BWEZ, and help out the Central Victoria Livestock Exchange near Miners Rest for anyone coming up from the south.
While one could argue building a truck route through a residential area might not be the wisest idea, the counter-argument is that it would be treated as an arterial route.
The Link Road project was overlooked for several federal elections and budgets, but this year, the state Liberal opposition promised $278 million to build it - Labor is instead focused on duplicating Carngham Road, committing $6 million in this year's budget for a business case.
We'll be out on the road again to see how the commute's changed in November, keep an eye out.
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