The regularly flooded ford across the Kororoit Creek estuary at Altona is to be upgraded for greater flow capacity and improved safety for bike riders.
The City of Hobsons Bay is about to embark on a substantial project to replace the ford with a modern, robust structure. The raised crossing will accommodate a vehicle carriageway and a shared-user path with safety guard rails, as well as installation of an electronic flood-warning system.
Work starts on Monday 18 November and will continue until 30 June 2025, resulting in an unavoidable, lengthy closure of this crossing, with no convenient alternative connection available other than the bike lanes on busy Kororoit Creek and Millers Roads. The only way of accessing these is the roundabout linking these two roads.
Many confident riders take this road route without great concern, but it would be daunting/ unsafe for a group of riders such as ours to negotiate our way across the roundabout, be it riding or walking the bikes across.
The proposal is to introduce a new starting point, Newport Station (Halls St), for all future rides that would normally use the ford crossing and to retain Altona Pier for the remainder. Clearly, the rides starting from the City wouldn’t be affected.
This will be an inconvenience for some members and is regretted but this option appears to offer the best compromise and safety must remain paramount. However, this change would not affect riders choosing to negotiate the roundabout to get to or from BUG rides’ start and end points.
