The Victorian Government is introducing a scheme to keep traffic moving along key arterial roads by cracking down on urban congestion.

Private companies will reportedly pay a Road Occupation Charge to use inner-city arterial roads as part of building works or other activities from Wednesday 1 April 2020.

Most local governments charge developers who set up construction equipment, scaffolding or worksites in traffic lanes – this program extends those arrangements to cover arterial roads.

The Road Occupation Charge will reduce road blockages created by private bodies that hold up pedestrians, cyclists and public transport users. It will not apply to people temporarily occupying a road while moving house or renovating.

The scheme will apply to inner-Melbourne roads across 121 suburbs – from Beaumaris in the south east, Balwyn North in the east, Glenroy in the north west and Kingsville in the west.

This follows a successful trial across inner Melbourne in 2018, which saw a reduction in the length of road occupation periods by up to 75 per cent.

During the trial, one construction company reduced their occupation of a busy Melbourne intersection from 92 days to one day.

Melbourne is one of the fastest-growing cities in the developed world and traffic volumes have grown by 20 per cent in the past 10 years.

Thirteen million trips are taken each day in Melbourne across all forms of transport, with the Victorian Department of Transport estimating this figure will increase to 23 million by 2050.

This huge growth in people using our transport network is why the Labor Government is investing more than $9 billion on major road projects across Melbourne to reduce congestion for motorists, on top of building the West Gate Tunnel and North East Link, the vital missing link in our freeway network.

The Department of Transport will monitor the network to ensure companies are complying with the Road Occupation Charge – and all revenue collected will be re-invested into congestion busting initiatives.