Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Turville Place Reserve

The Council is planning on upgrading Turville Place Reserve - it sure needs it. This rather unloved and unlovely piece of open space next to the Graham St overpass is used mainly to get to the Graham tram stop.
Offer us your thoughts on what could be done to improve the area. The things that bother you give useful information about what you think needs to be done.
Council staff and me will be on site on Saturday 30 October between 10 and 12.30 or may be easier for you to provide feedback here
Before the overpass was built in the 1970s, there used to be a double set of constantly closing level crossing gates here to accommodate the heavy volume of passenger and freight traffic that used the line. Traffic used to get held up - sometimes all the way back to Bay St. The overpass was constructed in relation to the Westgate Bridge since Graham St provided direct access to it. Many shops and homes were demolished to make way for the overpass.
[adapted from Railway Rockeries: Tales of the Melbourne and Hobson's Bay Railway Reserves, Port Melbourne, Port Melbourne Historical and Preservation Society]

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Best thing of all would be to build a tunnel and remove the overpass. It would create some wonderful space around Morris Reserve, Turville Place and the railway reserve. And think how much quieter (and surely healthier) it would be for the tennis players.

Anne

Port Places said...

Yes - having all the open space at one level would be wonderful. That is how it was in the old days - a whole community went when they built that overpass.