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IN THE COMMUNITY | Wonthaggi

Project Highlight

Graham Street and Murray Street Pedestrian Safety Improvements, Wonthaggi: Making the Town Centre Safer for Everyone

Not every infrastructure project is measured in kilometres of new road or tonnes of concrete. Some of the most meaningful safety improvements happen at the scale of a single crossing, a reconfigured intersection, or a new raised platform in the heart of a regional town centre. The Graham Street and Murray Street pedestrian safety upgrades in Wonthaggi are exactly that kind of project, and Uniform Safety Signs is proud to have supplied the signage that forms a permanent and visible part of this improvement to the Wonthaggi CBD.

The Project: Pedestrian Safety at the Heart of Wonthaggi

Wonthaggi is the largest town and commercial centre of Bass Coast Shire on Victoria’s south Gippsland coast, approximately 130 kilometres south-east of Melbourne. Its CBD, centred on Graham Street and the surrounding streets, serves as the primary retail and services hub for the broader Bass Coast community, including Inverloch, Phillip Island, San Remo, and the surrounding rural areas. As with many regional town centres that developed around a car-centric road hierarchy, Wonthaggi’s CBD had historically prioritised vehicle movement over pedestrian safety, with limited safe crossing infrastructure across its key arterial streets.

Regional Roads Victoria, acting on behalf of the Victorian Government, delivered two new raised pedestrian crossings on Graham Street and upgraded the existing zebra crossing on Murray Street to a raised pedestrian crossing, with works commencing in May 2022 and completing in January 2023. Accompanying the crossing infrastructure, a new 40 km/h speed limit was introduced across Graham Street, Murray Street, Billson Street and McBride Avenue throughout the CBD.

The two new Graham Street crossings were positioned at two high-pedestrian-demand locations: outside Plaza Arcade and in front of the Wonthaggi Union Community Arts Centre. Both locations sit on the primary pedestrian movement spine through the town centre, and the crossing network collectively links Graham Street through to Murray Street, creating a continuous and prioritised pedestrian route between the key retail, civic, and community facilities of the CBD.

Government Funding: The Australian Road Safety Program

The Graham Street and Murray Street works were funded under the Australian Government’s $3 billion Road Safety Program, delivered in partnership with the Victorian Government and the Transport Accident Commission. The program was established to address dangerous road locations across the country, with a particular focus on vulnerable road users including pedestrians and cyclists, and to support economic activity during the recovery period following the COVID-19 pandemic. The specific project allocation for Graham Street and Murray Street, Wonthaggi under Tranche 3 of the Victorian program was $1.76 million, with funding split between the Australian Government contribution and Victorian co-funding.

The works were part of a broader package of CBD improvements in Wonthaggi that also included a $650,000 upgrade of the Biggs Drive and Murray Street intersection, funded under the Federal Government’s Black Spot Program, as well as new street furniture, modular planter boxes along McBride Avenue, Apex Park redevelopment, and the planting of 13 Crepe Myrtle trees along Graham Street as part of Bass Coast Shire Council’s Alternative Freight Route Strategy, which aims to redirect heavy vehicles away from the town centre. Bass Coast Shire Council contributed a further $1 million investment to support the broader CBD upgrade package. Together these investments represent a concerted and coordinated effort by federal, state, and local governments to improve the safety, amenity, and economic vitality of Wonthaggi’s town centre.

The Technical Scope: Raised Pedestrian Crossings and Speed Environment

Raised pedestrian crossings, sometimes referred to as wombat crossings or raised safety platforms, are one of the most evidence-based interventions available for improving pedestrian safety at mid-block or intersection crossing points in urban environments. Unlike a conventional at-grade marked crossing, a raised crossing elevates the pedestrian path to footpath level, requiring approaching vehicles to physically decelerate to mount and traverse the platform. The raised geometry creates a tactile and kinematic speed management effect that operates independently of driver compliance with signage alone.

At Wonthaggi, the Graham Street crossings were also fitted with flashing light systems to alert approaching drivers to slow and give way to pedestrians, providing an active warning cue in addition to the passive geometry of the raised platform. The combination of raised platform geometry, reduced 40 km/h speed limit, and flashing warning lights creates a layered safety treatment that addresses the crash risk from multiple angles simultaneously.

The introduction of the 40 km/h speed limit across the CBD is itself a significant safety intervention. Research consistently demonstrates that the probability of a pedestrian sustaining a fatal injury when struck by a vehicle at 50 km/h is substantially higher than at 40 km/h. The speed limit change, combined with the physical traffic calming effect of the raised platforms, materially reduces the consequence of any crash event that does occur, in addition to reducing the frequency of conflict between pedestrians and vehicles at crossing points.

The upgraded Murray Street crossing similarly replaced the existing flat zebra crossing with a raised platform, bringing it into alignment with the higher-priority pedestrian treatment applied to the Graham Street crossings and creating a consistent and legible pedestrian environment across the core of the CBD.

Our Role: Supplying the Signage

A project of this type generates a specific and technically demanding signage requirement that extends well beyond the crossing platforms themselves.

The introduction of a new 40 km/h speed zone across Graham Street, Murray Street, Billson Street and McBride Avenue required speed limit signs manufactured and positioned in full compliance with the relevant Australian Standards and VicRoads requirements for speed zone entry and repeater signage. Speed zone signs must be placed at the correct locations to legally define the extent of the zone and to give drivers adequate preview distance, and their retroreflective sheeting specification must ensure legibility across all lighting conditions.

The raised pedestrian crossings required pedestrian crossing regulatory signs on the road approaches to each crossing, compliant with AS 1742.10 for pedestrian facilities, giving drivers the required advance notice of the crossing ahead. Warning signs must similarly be installed at the correct preview distance from the crossing, scaled and positioned in accordance with the operating speed of the approach. At a raised crossing fitted with active flashing light systems, the signage package must integrate correctly with the warning device infrastructure to ensure drivers receive a consistent and unambiguous set of cues as they approach.

Line marking at each crossing, including the raised platform pedestrian crossing markings, stop lines on the approach, and any associated pavement delineation, must also comply with AS 1742.10 and the relevant VicRoads design standards for urban pedestrian facilities.

Uniform Safety Signs supplied the signage package for the Graham Street and Murray Street pedestrian safety improvement works. Working on a live town centre arterial road in an active commercial precinct demands careful coordination between sign supply, civil construction sequencing, and traffic management operations. Signs must be available at the right time to allow traffic management arrangements to be updated as works progress, and the quality and compliance of every sign must be confirmed before it goes into the ground, because non-compliant signage on a pedestrian crossing installation reflects on the safety of the entire project.

We are proud to have contributed to an upgrade that has materially improved the safety of Wonthaggi’s CBD for the thousands of residents, workers, and visitors who use Graham Street and Murray Street every day.

Looking Ahead

The Wonthaggi CBD improvements represent a model for how coordinated investment across federal, state, and local government can transform the safety and amenity of a regional town centre when it is delivered with care and precision. Uniform Safety Signs looks forward to continuing to support road safety upgrade projects of this kind across Victoria’s regional and rural communities.

Uniform Safety Signs: supplying the signs that protect every road user, in every community across Victoria.