Sent the following letter to the Victorian Ombudsman today

I am writing on behalf of local residents about work that VicRoads undertook from May to October 2012 to upgrade the Monash freeway sound barriers in East Malvern.  This upgrade was ineffectual and only resulted in an increase in the noise from the freeway to the point where the noise now is intolerable.  In order to get the situation rectified I have
·      Contacted VicRoads on numerous occasions to complain with no result.  Contact made on  20-10 -2012 (Ref# 500502540) and 24-10-2012 (Ref# 500503666).
·      Organised a petition with local residents to express our displeasure with the upgrade work, see Attachment A.  Between the 14th of November and 1st December I sent a total of 24 of the letters to the CEO of VicRoads, Gary Liddle.  Copies of these signed letters are available on request.  No response to the residents has yet been received.
·      Spoken to the Project Manager, David Smith, on a number of occasions and met with him once to no effect.

As a result of my actions I have received two letters from VicRoads dated 3-12 -2012 and 21-12-2012, see attachments B and C.  I found the letter of 5-12-2012 particularly offensive as it implied in the third paragraph that we residents here near the freeway are second class citizens and can be used for VicRoads experiments.  The letter of 21-12-2012 promises that the test results will be  available in late January 2013 – we still have not seen them.

Apart from the increase in noise from the freeway other areas of concert that we have are
·      Removal of vegetation with subsequent long lead time to replace
·      Substandard workmanship including gaps in the barriers which still exist despite assurances they would be fixed (see attachment B).
·      Carelessness by the contractors during the construction work in leaving barriers down overnight resulting in increased noise and allowing people and pets to wander onto the freeway.
·      Lack of consultation with residents.

I have followed many other avenues (which I understand to be outside your jurisdiction) to try and get the noise problem resolved.  A full outline of the actions I have taken is detailed in a blog I have set up at freewaynoise.blogspot.com.au.

What we, the residents, are trying to achieve as matters for urgent attention by VicRoads are threefold
1.     Reduction of the intrusive and disturbing noise caused by the work that VicRoads undertook last year
2.     Acknowledgement to all the residents who signed the letter to Gary Liddle at VicRoads of their concerns and the steps being taken to address them, and
3.     Publishing of the noise test results as promised in Attachment C.

Other residents have also complained to VicRoads with no success.

We have been constantly frustrated by VicRoads inactivity to address our concerns and hope that you can assist in our attempt to improve the situation.

We look forward to you assistance.

Yours sincerely

Chris Babarczy

Hopefully some action will com of this.

The following article appeared in the Stonnington Leader on the 16th of April

Very disappointing. It does not get across our displeasure with the whole exercise. In fact it just accepts the explanations given by VicRoads and Michael O'Brien without question.

It seems as though everyone just kowtows to VicRoads and totally ignores the concerns of the residents. My next port of call is to try and interest the Ombudsman and hope that they will look at the issue with more sympathy/understanding than any of VicRoads, Michael O'Brien or the Leader newspaper have done so far. We, the residents, know the noise is worse now than before and yet no one listens!

From the actions (non-actions?) so far of VicRoads it would seem from my suspicious mind that they know they have made a mistake with the new barriers and are now trying to ignore us the residents and hope we will go away. How can we go about getting answers to the questions I posted on 29th March? How can we get some sort of action from them?

As for Michael O'Brien, he has been probably the most disappointing because he has appeared to not care and again how can we get answers from him. His job is, I would have thought, to listen to and try and help his constituents - but he has not. Questions are posted on 29th March.

Photographer from the Stonnington Leader came around today and took photos of a number of residents next to the sound barrier at the corner of Winton Rd and Thornbury Cres.  My thanks to those residents who turned up and were willing to have their photos taken. I can only hope that when the article appears in the local paper it will pressure VicRoads to take some action and improve the noise.