A solution to the parking woes at Craigieburn railway station could be a step closer following a Hume council and Public Transport Victoria decision to work together on a proposal for additional parking.
At a meeting on Monday last week, a letter from Transport Minister Terry Mulder was presented to the council, encouraging it to develop a parking proposal with PTV for land located on the east side of the Hume Highway and the south of Craigieburn’s train maintenance facility.
The letter came after the council wrote to the minister in June, looking to explore the use of that parcel of land for parking.
Mr Mulder states in his letter “the feasibility of developing this land for car parking has not yet been assessed,” and he “encouraged the council to work with PTV to jointly examine the proposal”.
Cr Casey Nunn said she hoped this was the start of a process to solve the parking issues at the station.
“My fellow councillors and I were quite disappointed with Mr Mulder [in June] as we had written to him for some assistance and the reply had indicated the minister and PTV wanted some ideas from council on how this could be solved.
“One of those solutions was the parcel of land which this letter relates to … it is owned by the state and, therefore, can be developed into parking.”
PTV spokesman Adrian Darwent said preliminary discussions with the council had started and ‘‘initial scoping’’ of the area was being undertaken.
“A range of technical and non-technical matters will need to be considered, including the feasibility of using the existing land as a viable car park option, given its distance from the station, limitations of vehicle access to the site and the possible need for future use of the land by VicRoads.”
