By Tara Murray
School days have been shortened and St. Francis Catholic College is paying nearly $700 a day on buses as it deals with traffic congestion around its Cobblebank campus.
A lack of power to traffic lights has meant that Bridge Road extension has remained closed near the school, leaving surrounded roads full at school pick up time.
Parent Melanie Barnes started a petition saying they had been waiting long enough.
“We have been patient and every year there’s been more students,” she said. “It causes more traffic and more congestion.
“It is not safe for children, nor the residents that live there.”
In communication with parents, which has been seen by Star Weekly, the college made the call for year 7 students to finish 30 minutes earlier and year 8 students to finish 15 minutes early to try and stagger pick up times.
Ms Barnes said they don’t blame the college for this, but it’s not a viable solution with students’ education suffering.
“For year 7 students that is two and half hours a week of learning time,” she said. “That is not acceptable.“
College principal Marlene Jorgensen said is calling for urgent action from Melton council to open Bridge Road .
She said they’d been in contact with Melton council since May 2021 about concerns and the impact it was having and were told the Bridge Road extension would be opened in October 2022.
The school has almost 600 students now, including 450 starting at the school in the past two years.
“The current situation is neither financially sustainable for the college nor conducive to student learning,” Ms Jorgensen said.
“With Bridge Road still closed, students also had no safe pedestrian or bicycle access to the school.“
To overcome this, the college decided to shuttle students from the Cobblebank Stadium to and from school each day.
This year they’ve had to hire a larger bus company and it’s costing $680 per day.
“This temporary arrangement was a financial burden,” Ms Jorgensen said. “It was also taxing on staff as we had to allocate extra supervision at the stadium for pick-up each day and staff to drive the buses.”
Ms Jorgensen confirmed the different finish times for students.
A Powercor spokesperson said on February 12, it had energised a service pit at Bridge Road in Melton the day before on per schedule. The new connection for supply to the traffic signals was then completed on Wednesday.
Melton council city delivery director Neil Whiteside said it was now working with AGL and the Department of Transport and Planning to receive the final approvals would continue to work with the school community.
“Council is installing a temporary pedestrian path on the east side of Ferris Road between the Cobblebank Village Shopping Centre and Bridge Road to provide another option for parents to drop their children near the school. We are working to deliver this by early next [this] week. “
