Wellington Street wars: The plan dividing Collingwood and Clifton Hill

A proposal to transform a 1.1-kilometre stretch of a major inner-city road into a “bicycle street” blocked to most cars has triggered intense community uprisings among residents of Collingwood and Clifton Hill.

Yarra City Council will vote in May on whether to press ahead with plans to place “modal filters” such as garden beds and concrete kerbs along Wellington Street to block vehicles from driving the full length between Johnston Street in Collingwood and Queens Parade in Clifton Hill.

While locals on Wellington Street would still be able to access their homes, the council asserts the move would divert about 11,000 cars daily off Wellington Street that are merely driving through the area and create a safer zone for cyclists and pedestrians.

The plans are the final stages of the Yarra council’s gradual upgrade of Wellington Street. It has already completed two stages south of Johnston Street; however, those sections between Victoria Parade and Johnston Street do not include the traffic blocking that is proposed for the latter stages.

The two opposing camps spilled onto the streets in competing community events in recent days, with councillors attending both.

On Sunday, supporters of the “Yes” campaign gathered at the Molly Rose brewery in Collingwood to advocate for a “calmer and greener” neighbourhood. A day later, opponents met at Little Sam’s Service Station to protest against the “drastic” restriction of local roads and removal of parking.

Placards for both sides cropped up on homes and businesses along the strip, and both sides have accused the other of spreading misinformation.

The stretch currently has painted bike lanes and two-way vehicle traffic. The council has put forward two distinct design paths to prioritise cycling: a so-called “Bicycle Street” 30km/h shared zone where motorists share the main traffic lanes with cyclists, or dedicated bike lanes featuring physical “protected” barriers in Clifton Hill and painted lanes in Collingwood.

Crucially, both models will include physical barriers to block Wellington Street to through-traffic at multiple intersections, requiring Wellington Street residents to use side-street diversions to reach their homes.

Both designs reduce on-street parking and change the number of trees on Wellington Street across both suburbs.

Local Alexandra Lamb, who organised the “Say Yes to a New Wellington St” campaign, says the project is essential to reclaim the neighbourhood from a “constant noisy, polluted stream of traffic”.

“People living on Wellington Street are wiping black soot off their windows because of the pollution,” Lamb said. She argued that with 88 per cent of vehicles identified as through-traffic, the street had become dangerous for locals.

“We see bumper-to-bumper traffic on Wellington Street; it’s chockers. If you’re walking around or cycling around, it takes a long time to just cross the street – it’s hectic.”

However, the “Oppose Wellington St Closure” group has challenged the data assumptions behind the project. They fear the plan will funnel thousands of cars onto the residential side streets and the parallel Gold Street, which houses a community park and a council-run childcare centre.

They also cite concern for the viability of two service stations on the Wellington strip if through-traffic is cut, as well as the impact of drop-offs at Clifton Hill Primary School.

A major point of contention is whether the council has adequately communicated its plans. While the council ran formal consultation for a month between September and October last year, public debate is only peaking now.

The pro-change supporters say the community was well aware of the plans, while the opponents complained that signage was vague, referencing “plans for a safer Wellington Street” without explicitly stating the traffic cut-off. Some say letterbox drops were not done far enough, while others claim they never received the drops.

“The long and short is this has been appallingly consulted by the council. It is ideological, not logical,” said Sebastian Guiney, leader of the Oppose group.

“The most common response I get when I speak to people… is: ‘No, I haven’t heard of it.’ And this is not a small project – this is … closing a major street.”

Council officers defended the process at the last council meeting, saying they had letterboxed more than 8500 properties within the area bounded by Queens Parade, Hoddle Street, Victoria Parade and Smith Street between last September and October and door-knocked “every single business in that section of Wellington Street”.

A council spokesperson told The Age that officers consulted Clifton Hill Primary School leadership as early as August 2025 and held a “pop-up” session in October attended by 100 children and 50 adults.

Mayor Stephen Jolly told a recent council meeting he had “never seen Collingwood so passionate about something one way or another”.

He also said that despite previously supporting the move to prioritise bike lanes along the strip, the council should not “force what we think is a good idea down the throats of a community that doesn’t want it”.

Separately, the council recently began work on controversially narrowing protected bike lanes, five years after installing them on Elizabeth Street in Richmond.

The council will vote on the plan at a meeting on May 12.

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