CityLink founder warns 'wrong way, go back' on East West Link

Date
    September 9, 2014


CityLink engineer Alan Hale says public transport is the answer to Melbourne's traffic congestion.      

It was the turn of the 1990s, Victoria's economy was as lank as Kurt Cobain's hair and civil engineers were scratching around for work.

Alan Hale and his colleagues at Acer Wargon Chapman used their ample downtime to draw up plans for a toll road and tunnel beneath the Yarra that would cure Melbourne's chronic north-south traffic woes.

Interviewed by The Age in August 1991, Mr Hale spruiked the benefits of the proposed road, which would later become CityLink, declaring it would create thousands of jobs and remedy the congestion that had turned King Street and Swanston Street into veritable car parks.

Now retired, Mr Hale still believes CityLink changed Melbourne for the better and helped revive the CBD. But he holds startlingly different views about the value of Melbourne's current mega road project, the East West Link.      

Mr Hale says the 5.2-kilometre toll road is "the wrong priority and will not alleviate congestion across the city" and that the Napthine government is set to sign on to a project that will set Melbourne back for years.      

"The evidence from cities around the world where real renewal has been achieved is that public transport should be the primary focus, not just more and more roads," he says.

"For those of us who have been involved in major transport projects long enough, the lessons learnt, often the hard way, are that building more roads without investing in public transport is simply a recipe for inducing more vehicular travel."

CityLink was followed by the construction of EastLink, then Peninsula Link, as Victoria continued to build new roads instead of rail lines. Mr Hale argues it is time Melbourne followed other smart cities around the globe and redressed the imbalance.

The former roads engineer's road to Damascus moment came while working with a company that had built a tram network for the French city of Strasbourg, which turned the CBD into a pedestrian haven by redirecting vehicle traffic to a new outer ring road.

Mr Hale, no public transport purist, argues completing the "missing link" in the ring road between Greensborough and the Eastern Freeway would similarly "make a lot of sense" because, unlike the East West Link, it would divert traffic away from the inner suburbs.

The Napthine government is on course to sign contracts within weeks for stage one of the East West Link, a $6 billion to $8 billion connection between the end of the Eastern Freeway in Collingwood and CityLink in Flemington.

A recent traffic study commissioned by the government found it could save motorists an hour a day in travel time compared with driving along congested above-ground roads.

Napthine government spokeswoman Larissa Garvin defended the government's record, arguing that "more than half of the government's $24 billion infrastructure program is being spent on public transport".

"But public transport alone can't get your groceries to your supermarket, can't get tradies to their sites, can't get mums to the places they need to be each day, and it certainly can't get big trucks off local roads," Ms Garvin said. "The reality is that both rail and roads are needed, and we are doing both."

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/citylink-founder-warns-wrong-way-go-back-on-east-west-link-20140908-10dxcb.html#ixzz3ClJ3YBY8

Symbolic step for East West Link but Napthine keeps his distance

Date
    September 9, 2014


News that a "preferred bidder" has been selected to build the first half of the Napthine government's signature East West Link might appear an incremental step. So incremental that Premier Denis Napthine was on Tuesday nowhere near the announcement.      

There is still so much that we don't know about this massive project, including the final cost, the final design, the final number of properties to be acquired or how much motorists will be charged to use the road.      

As Treasurer Michael O'Brien points out there is "still much to be done" before contracts are signed, including resolving a number of thorny planning issues, including determining whether additional properties should be purchased.


The only thing that has now changed with the announcement is that government will now negotiate with a single consortium, where previously there were two bidders in the mix. Nothing is locked in, and if things don't go well, other consortia can still be brought back to the table.

Incremental though it may be, the latest announcement is symbolically important.

Above all, it highlights the Coalition's determination to lock the project down before the November 29 election, even though the politics associated with the road are far from clear.      

Poll after poll has shown voters rate other transport projects as higher priorities, particularly construction of a new rail tunnel to boost capacity across the network and level crossing upgrades. The old adage that roads provide bigger political gains than other transport projects no longer seems to hold.

On Tuesday, Denis Napthine kept his distance, instead announcing $12 million to upgrade facilities at Cranbourne Secondary College.

Less than three months from an election, the idea that the Premier would miss an opportunity to spruik the biggest infrastructure project in Victoria's history is curious, to say the least.

The Abbott government, which is chipping in $3 billion for both sections of the link, was also notably absent.

Despite heading on a joint press release with O'Brien to make the announcement, Federal Assistant Minister for Infrastructure Jamie Briggs did not participate in a press conference, as is common practice with joint announcements.

The jury is still out, but right now the project isn't the political winner the Coalition might have earlier predicted.

But it may yet also lead to a headache for Labor. If Dan Andrews wins, he will face a difficult choice: spend up big on a project he has spent months telling us is a dud which it will never be able to "own" politically, or find a way of wriggling out of a legal contract. This would inevitably dent Labor's credibility, both in the eyes of voters and the business community.

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/symbolic-step-for-east-west-link-but-napthine-keeps-his-distance-20140909-10edez.html#ixzz3Cnpbpnrz