VicRoads manages approximately 80,000 hectares of roadsides across the state. These roadsides contain important remnant vegetation, watercourses, and aesthetic and social / cultural heritage values. Our roadsides also contain infrastructure essential to the safe and efficient operation of the road and other utilities.
Maintaining the inherent values of our roadsides while also meeting road user requirements is important. The following areas provide an overview of VicRoads activities in relation to roadside management:
Roadsides Habitat Values
Roadside Management Strategy
Roadside Conservation Management Plans
Roadsides and the Environment Strategy
Roadside Handbook
Code of Practice for Roadside Vegetation Removal (proposed)
Roadsides are important reserves for remnant vegetation. In some areas the vegetation contained in our roadsides is amongst the last remnant patches of particular habitat types. These areas are particularly important in supporting endangered plant and animal species reliant on specific habitats. Roadsides can also be important as wildlife corridors providing links between other habitat patches such as native forests, wetlands, parks and reserves etc.
VicRoads Roadside Management Strategy 2002[PDF, 878KB,12 pp] provides VicRoads staff with a framework when considering management requirements in the areas of road safety, the environment, cultural heritage, and amenity and access issues. As with all VicRoads projects, roadside management is completed with due respect paid to stakeholder and community requirements and legal and policy obligations.
Roadside Conservation Management Plans (RCMPs) identify the existing vegetation and management approach required for specific lengths of roadsides. These documents are a good reference for staff when considering the environmental values of roadsides before works begin and are also used in the creation of Project Environmental Protection Strategies for works along that length of road. RCMPs also help identify areas of high conservation significance that could be prioritised for roadside maintenance activities such as weed control, further revegetation or signage of ‘significant conservation areas’.
More information on the purpose and prepartion of RCMPs is available in VicRoads Roadside Conservation Management Plan Guidelines 2006 [PDF, 709KB, 28pp].
As part of the VicRoads Environment Strategy VicRoads has identified the following priorities for roadside management:
- Record and monitor the extent and condition of natural and cultural assets and their maintenance requirements
- Further develop roadside conservation management plans to ensure conservation issues are adequately addressed and implemented
- Minimise and manage impacts from activities conducted by third parties on roadsides
- Participate in Municipal Fire Prevention Planning
- Take into account the conservation significance, amenity and cultural heritage value of affected vegetation when evaluating road improvements
- Adopt an environmentally responsive approach to achieve road safety objectives on roadsides.
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VicRoads has prepared a Roadside Handbook 2006 [pdf, 1.0Mb, 32pp] to provide a general introduction to the protection of the natural and cultyural enviroment of roadsides. The Handbook is based on best practice in roadside management and is a useful guide to those working in roadsides.
Hard copies of the Roadside Handbook can be purchased from VicRoads Bookshop.
VicRoads is working with the Department of Sustainability and Environment and local government to develop a Code of Practice for Roadside Vegetation Removal. The Code of Practice will be developed following the findings of the Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry into Crashes involving Roadside Objects and the review of planning permit exemptions for native vegetation removal currently being undertaken by the Victorian Government.
The Code will provide direction when considering the lopping and removal of native vegetation within the road reserve that is associated with ‘maintaining the function of the road’ and seek to promote greater consistency in the way decisions are made involving native vegetation removal.
A Background Paper has been distributed for consultation with key stakeholders. Public consultation on the release of a draft Code of Practice will be undertaken in early 2008. For more information please e-mail VicRoads at roadsides@roads.vic.gov.au
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