In June 2026, Bass Coast Shire Council will vote on whether to make part of Surf Parade
permanently one-way.
permanently one-way.
This article is drawn entirely from Council’s own public record.
By Michelle Gardiner
IN 2019, Bass Coast Shire Council asked Inverloch how it wanted the final section of the Surf Parade shared path built. Of 1,636 submissions, 73 per cent chose two-way traffic with parking. Council voted 5 to 4 to pursue that option.
In May 2024, it voted for one-way instead. At each step between, the options offered to the community changed – and the original choice slowly disappeared.
IN 2019, Bass Coast Shire Council asked Inverloch how it wanted the final section of the Surf Parade shared path built. Of 1,636 submissions, 73 per cent chose two-way traffic with parking. Council voted 5 to 4 to pursue that option.
In May 2024, it voted for one-way instead. At each step between, the options offered to the community changed – and the original choice slowly disappeared.
Background
Surf Parade runs along the Inverloch foreshore. The road reserve is Council’s land. The coastal reserve is Crown land governed by state legislation, administered by DEECA (formerly DELWP until 2023). Different land, different laws, different governing bodies – and different design constraints.
Two reports. Both said no. Neither was shown to the community.
Council had been commissioning traffic assessments of a one-way arrangement since 2013. HDS Australia in 2013 said the costs and disruption outweighed any benefit. GTA Consultants in 2019 went further – recommending against one-way, stating two-way traffic was appropriate, and estimating one-way would require an additional $170,000 to $240,000 in traffic engineering works. Neither report was included in the community consultation materials.
The 2023 consultation. The option was already gone.
Following a Marine and Coastal Act – administered by DEECA – application being refused in December 2020 due to concerns about erosion along the coast, Council knew any future design had to stay within the road reserve.
When the 2023 consultation opened, the two-way-with-parking option had been removed at officer level. Cape-to-Cape – a coastal reserve framework with no bearing on Council’s own land – was cited as justification, without formal written government advice to support it. Residents chose between one-way with parking or two-way without – and without sight of Council’s own traffic reports concluding one-way was the wrong approach. Of 616 responses, the result was inconclusive. A petition of 564 signatures tabled at the December 2023 council meeting called on Council to reject both options and reinstate the 2019 community choice.
The community had five days and half a statement.
Three options were submitted to DEECA in April 2024. An email statement dated 1 May 2024 was included in the officer’s report ahead of the council vote, presented as government confirmation of the coastal reserve position. The report was published on Council’s engagement platform just five days before the vote. One sentence appeared in the body of that report and on Council’s public platform: ‘DEECA would not approve removal of vegetation or encroachment into the coastal reserve to construct a path.’ The rest was left out:
“The three options submitted by council were reviewed by DEECA and given that all these options are contained within the road reserve and therefore do not impact the adjoining foreshore reserve, DEECA does not have a preferred option.”
Yet only the opening sentence was published. In the context of a consultation that presented two constrained options – one-way with parking or two-way without – that sentence read as a government barrier to a two-way outcome, reinforcing the impression that it would require coastal encroachment. The full statement said something quite different. It confirmed that all three options were road-reserve designs and that DEECA had no preferred option between them. By confirming that, DEECA was effectively saying the decision sat with Council.
A hybrid. A design fault. A community kept in the dark.
The third option was a hybrid – two-way traffic with parking at four intermittent slow points. All three options had been designed using IDM standard dimensions – carriageway widths broader than the planning scheme requires. Council’s own traffic modelling ruled the hybrid out for poor traffic performance and insufficient parking. The constraint was not the coastal reserve. It was a design fault – the product of dimensions that left no room for a solution.
The community never saw it.
What the modelling showed. What the community was told.
Council’s public FAQ stated only 10 per cent of displaced traffic would use Lohr Avenue. Council’s own modelling showed a 73 per cent increase in vehicle volumes on that street – a residential street never designed for through traffic. The report recommended further mitigation work before implementation. That work has not been publicly demonstrated or costed.
In May 2024, Council voted for one-way.
Surf Parade runs along the Inverloch foreshore. The road reserve is Council’s land. The coastal reserve is Crown land governed by state legislation, administered by DEECA (formerly DELWP until 2023). Different land, different laws, different governing bodies – and different design constraints.
Two reports. Both said no. Neither was shown to the community.
Council had been commissioning traffic assessments of a one-way arrangement since 2013. HDS Australia in 2013 said the costs and disruption outweighed any benefit. GTA Consultants in 2019 went further – recommending against one-way, stating two-way traffic was appropriate, and estimating one-way would require an additional $170,000 to $240,000 in traffic engineering works. Neither report was included in the community consultation materials.
The 2023 consultation. The option was already gone.
Following a Marine and Coastal Act – administered by DEECA – application being refused in December 2020 due to concerns about erosion along the coast, Council knew any future design had to stay within the road reserve.
When the 2023 consultation opened, the two-way-with-parking option had been removed at officer level. Cape-to-Cape – a coastal reserve framework with no bearing on Council’s own land – was cited as justification, without formal written government advice to support it. Residents chose between one-way with parking or two-way without – and without sight of Council’s own traffic reports concluding one-way was the wrong approach. Of 616 responses, the result was inconclusive. A petition of 564 signatures tabled at the December 2023 council meeting called on Council to reject both options and reinstate the 2019 community choice.
The community had five days and half a statement.
Three options were submitted to DEECA in April 2024. An email statement dated 1 May 2024 was included in the officer’s report ahead of the council vote, presented as government confirmation of the coastal reserve position. The report was published on Council’s engagement platform just five days before the vote. One sentence appeared in the body of that report and on Council’s public platform: ‘DEECA would not approve removal of vegetation or encroachment into the coastal reserve to construct a path.’ The rest was left out:
“The three options submitted by council were reviewed by DEECA and given that all these options are contained within the road reserve and therefore do not impact the adjoining foreshore reserve, DEECA does not have a preferred option.”
Yet only the opening sentence was published. In the context of a consultation that presented two constrained options – one-way with parking or two-way without – that sentence read as a government barrier to a two-way outcome, reinforcing the impression that it would require coastal encroachment. The full statement said something quite different. It confirmed that all three options were road-reserve designs and that DEECA had no preferred option between them. By confirming that, DEECA was effectively saying the decision sat with Council.
A hybrid. A design fault. A community kept in the dark.
The third option was a hybrid – two-way traffic with parking at four intermittent slow points. All three options had been designed using IDM standard dimensions – carriageway widths broader than the planning scheme requires. Council’s own traffic modelling ruled the hybrid out for poor traffic performance and insufficient parking. The constraint was not the coastal reserve. It was a design fault – the product of dimensions that left no room for a solution.
The community never saw it.
What the modelling showed. What the community was told.
Council’s public FAQ stated only 10 per cent of displaced traffic would use Lohr Avenue. Council’s own modelling showed a 73 per cent increase in vehicle volumes on that street – a residential street never designed for through traffic. The report recommended further mitigation work before implementation. That work has not been publicly demonstrated or costed.
In May 2024, Council voted for one-way.
Lohr Avenue is ill suited to extra traffic
What could have been. What still could be.
Since 2015, Council had held a planning permit authorising vegetation removal within the road reserve – the very approval needed for a two-way design. Amended as recently as August 2021, it remained valid through both the 2023 consultation and the May 2024 vote. It was never disclosed. It expired in April 2025, eleven months after the vote. A 2019 ecological assessment had already confirmed the environmental offsets – costing $10,054 – were held by Council at Screw Creek. The permit existed. The ecological work was done. The offsets were ready.
Community members with decades of professional engineering and surveying experience have recently shown what could still work. Using narrower but still compliant dimensions – comparable to existing sections of Surf Parade itself – they developed a concept showing two-way traffic, parking and the shared path could fit within the road reserve without touching the coastal reserve. Two separate proposals were formally submitted to the council committee by the 1 April 2026 deadline. The question Council has yet to answer: was this concept ever modelled?
June 2026. Time to get it right.
For years, the community has asked the right questions and not been given the full picture. At each step, a door closed – some quietly, some without explanation. More than 1,300 residents petitioned across two rounds of consultation – 564 signatures in December 2023 calling on council to reject both options and reinstate the 2019 community choice, and a further 772 signatures presented to council in April 2026. Formal submissions were lodged. A community-run website coordinated further objections directly to councillors.
All they want is the shared path, two-way traffic and parking, done right. After all these years, the community deserves a council that thinks outside the square and delivers what it chose. Council will decide in June.
Michelle Gardiner is a resident of Lohr Avenue. At the April 15 council meeting she presented a petition containing 772 signatures objecting to the council proposal to make a section of Surf Parade one way.
Since 2015, Council had held a planning permit authorising vegetation removal within the road reserve – the very approval needed for a two-way design. Amended as recently as August 2021, it remained valid through both the 2023 consultation and the May 2024 vote. It was never disclosed. It expired in April 2025, eleven months after the vote. A 2019 ecological assessment had already confirmed the environmental offsets – costing $10,054 – were held by Council at Screw Creek. The permit existed. The ecological work was done. The offsets were ready.
Community members with decades of professional engineering and surveying experience have recently shown what could still work. Using narrower but still compliant dimensions – comparable to existing sections of Surf Parade itself – they developed a concept showing two-way traffic, parking and the shared path could fit within the road reserve without touching the coastal reserve. Two separate proposals were formally submitted to the council committee by the 1 April 2026 deadline. The question Council has yet to answer: was this concept ever modelled?
June 2026. Time to get it right.
For years, the community has asked the right questions and not been given the full picture. At each step, a door closed – some quietly, some without explanation. More than 1,300 residents petitioned across two rounds of consultation – 564 signatures in December 2023 calling on council to reject both options and reinstate the 2019 community choice, and a further 772 signatures presented to council in April 2026. Formal submissions were lodged. A community-run website coordinated further objections directly to councillors.
All they want is the shared path, two-way traffic and parking, done right. After all these years, the community deserves a council that thinks outside the square and delivers what it chose. Council will decide in June.
Michelle Gardiner is a resident of Lohr Avenue. At the April 15 council meeting she presented a petition containing 772 signatures objecting to the council proposal to make a section of Surf Parade one way.