By Jessica Anstice
It’s become near impossible to dodge potholes on Greenhills and McGregor roads in Pakenham and motorists are tired of it.
One Pakenham resident has even claimed she knows someone who has had a horse injured in a float while driving down McGregor Road – in the middle of summer.
“Even despite the owner driving as slowly as they could the horse became unbalanced in the float as it was bumping over the corrugations and it panicked and fell over,” Pakenham resident Kate Bromley explained.
“It was struggling to get up and just kept getting stuck. They had to stop and get it back up on the side of the road.
“The horse was quite badly injured and it was stuck in a box for a few months to heal.”
Ms Bromley keeps her horses on a property down McGregor Road and says part of the road is “un-driveable” at times.
“As soon as it rains the potholes open up and the whole thing becomes corrugated. You can’t get around it,” she said.
“And it has only gotten worse since the industrial estate on Greenhills Road opened.”
Motorists are using Greenhills Road as a shortcut to avoid Healsville-Kooweerup Road and Ms Bromley believes the road “just want handle the traffic”.
“The council ‘grade’ the road but there are no drains so nowhere for the rain to go and all they do is put dirt over the pot holes and scrape it,” she added.
“I’m no engineer but I would think the whole thing needs to be dug up, levelled and started again with drains down the side.”
Ms Bromley has since resorted to driving out the other end of Healesville-Kooweerup Road which adds a substantial amount of time to her trip.
Greenhills Road resident Alan Thomps is fed up with the state of the road, he has even seen car headlights and other car parts scattered along the road.
“The whole length of Greenhills Road – you wouldn’t believe what it’s like,” he said.
“It’s like it all the time. It’s graded on Monday and it will need grading again on Friday. They need to seal it.”
Motorist Melissa Lowe is concerned the two roads have the potential to cause accidents.
“I think they definitely need to be sealed properly to stop the potholes as it can be quite dangerous travelling along there,” Ms Lowe said.
McGregor Road resident Allison Green believes there is too much traffic for an unsealed road and the speed limit of 100km/h is “far too fast”.
“It has recently been so bad that my newly licenced daughter didn’t want to come home because she didn’t want to drive on the road because it is unsafe,” Ms Green said.
“Due to the constant growth in the area I feel these two roads need to be sealed as a matter of urgency and the speed limit needs to be dropped.”
