“On behalf of the Maroondah community I would like to congratulate the Liberal Party for listening to the community’s concerns and pledging $60million to upgrade Ringwood Station,” Maroondah City Council Mayor Councillor Alex Makin said.

“I thank our local members of parliament Ryan Smith and Heidi Victoria for advocating strongly on behalf of the Maroondah community and securing not only the funding, but a commitment to start the project within the next term of Parliament,” Cr Makin said.

“The Liberal Party’s commitment follows last week’s announcement by the Greens who pledged their support to transform Ringwood Station into an accessible, safe and integrated public transport hub,” Cr Makin said.

“We have now secured a promise from two of the major political parties to upgrade Ringwood Station. I now call on the Labor Party to join with their colleagues and commit to an upgrade of Ringwood Station to improve the future prosperity of Ringwood and Melbourne’s eastern region”, Cr Makin said.

“A safe, vibrant and integrated Ringwood Station is the missing piece of the State Government’s own Ringwood Activities District and to date Council has collected more than 2000 signatures on a petition calling on all major parties to commit to funding an upgrade to Ringwood Station within the term of the next government,” Cr Makin said.

“During the course of Council’s campaign calling for the Ringwood Station upgrade we have received support from many members of the community including several disability advocates. A video was produced and uploaded to YouTube which highlighted the concerns people with a disability have about accessing Ringwood Station,” Cr Makin said.

“This video was an important part of the campaign and I thank those people who were willing to share their personal stories as a way of highlighting the inadequacies of the current station layout,” Cr Makin said.

“The community support has been critical in demonstrating the need for improvements to Ringwood Station. I congratulate people for standing up for what they believe in and making the political parties realise that they can no longer ignore the needs of the Maroondah community,” Cr Makin said.

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