Another fatal accident on Coalfields Highway has thrown a spotlight on highways joining regional industry to the Port of Bunbury.
On Saturday July 3 two children died when a car being driven by their mother collided with a truck.
Following the accident a spokesperson for Main Roads was quoted by ABC News announcing another study of the road, without government having acted on its previous report from 2007. The earlier report by Main Roads indicated that the Coalfields Highway was in urgent need of a $40 million dollar upgrade.
However funding in the current budget announced by Premier Colin Barnet on May 20 of this year is only a tenth of that amount, a bandaid response to a lethal problem which was recognised by government three years earlier. A string of accidents have occurred since the 2007 report, giving the highway a notorious repution as a black spot for road casualties.
In August 2007 a 19 year old woman died on the Coalfields Highway when her car collided with a tree. On January 8 2008 two people were killed in a head on collision and the occupants of the other vehicle were seriously injured. On May 1 2010 a man trapped by the leg in his car following a collision with another vehicle. On May 28 a man was killed when his car left the Highway and struck a tree. In June a woman was cut from her car after it left the highway in wet conditions. Then last Saturday came the death of the two children and the injuries to their mother.
The pattern of accident and injury is more than can be attributed by Police to lack of driver judgement or hazardous road conditions. It is consistent with the road system having reached capacity and being in urgent need of upgrade.
However road casualites do not rate as highly in Main Roads costings as delay to industry, and it would seem that the failure to act between 2007 and now has been the result of how cost benefits are calculated in relation to roads. While the South West Development Corporation’s Infrastructure Development Plan of June 2010 admits that the Bunbury regional road network is at capacity, it is the delay caused to injury which is seen as the main cost benefit of improvements, not the human costs of lost income to families, lost capacity due to injury.
The Main Roads analysis of cost benefit only takes into account the cost of vehicle repairs, hospitalisation and medical treatments. The actual human costs are much higher, as indicated by Health Department trauma cost calculations which include broader measures, and would seem to deserve a more thorough assessment. By comparison, cost due to delay is assessed on an hourly basis of $20 per car, and $120 an hour for trucks. This narrow cost benefit method currenly employed unfortunately skews the decision making process towards the costs to industry and away from the human and social costs of the carnage.
But it does not explain why government forward planning recognised it had reached capacity three years ago, and has still failed to respond to either the needs of expanding industry or the people who have to travel these roads on a daily basis.
It is ironic that the community and industry should be expected to bear this intolerable cost at a time when there is so much debate federally about taxing mining profits in order to increase support for associated infrastructure development.