Crossing chaos: Massive queues on first day of NSW-Victoria border closure

Some motorists trying to cross the Victoria-NSW border this morning faced wait times of more than an hour and a half, on the first day of the border closure.

Queues stretched on for more than eight kilometres at the crossing from Wodonga into Albury, the hardest hit area.

“There’s a big wait there. Probably more than an hour and a half to get across,” Chris Miller from the Department of Transport told Neil Mitchell just before 10am.

Motorists have also endured lengthy waits in Echuca-Moama this morning.

“Around about four kilometres worth of queues on the way into Echuca, crossing over to Moama,” Mr Miller said.

Border closure at Echuca. There’s already a queue about 500m long at the checkpoint in Moama. @RossAndJohn pic.twitter.com/QwMBBBRsgZ

— Pat Mitchell (@patty_mitchell) July 7, 2020

At 1.15pm, there were still lengthy queues at the Echuca-Moama crossing.

 

Meanwhile, traffic volumes across the state declined over the past fortnight, a trend which is set to be exacerbated by Melbourne’s lockdown tonight.

Traffic volumes over the past fortnight were at about 74 per cent of February levels.

Last month, they reached 85 per cent of February levels.

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