Allan ‘should scrap rail loop, charge cars to enter Melbourne’
Victoria’s new Premier Jacinta Allan should scrap $200 billion suburban rail loop, defer any other transport expenditure it can to ease pressure on costs, and charge cars to enter and leave Melbourne’s CBD to give trams on major routes a freer run in the inner city, experts say.
Natasha Bradshaw, an associate in The Grattan Institute’s transport and cities program, said Ms Allan should abandon her predecessor Daniel Andrews’ habit of announcing major projects such as the rail loop in election campaigns before they have been properly costed and assessed by independent bodies.
The Victorian government’s $200 billion suburban rail should be scrapped, says The Grattan Institute’s Natasha Bradshaw.
The government eventually assessed the benefits of the suburban rail loop – which would follow a wide loop from Frankston in Melbourne’s southeast bayside to Werribee in the western suburbs – at just $50 billion to $60 billion, a fraction of the estimated cost of $150 billion to $200 billion.
Ms Bradshaw urged a sea change in the incoming Allan government’s approach to take seriously the advice of both Infrastructure Victoria and Infrastructure Australia, neither of which had included the suburban rail loop in their lists of priority projects.
She said skyrocketing construction costs from major projects were ricocheting across the industry, pushing up costs for local government road projects and sending some construction firms broke as they struggled with price uncertainty.
“These projects are very expensive and the risk of cost blowouts is big. So delaying any project until it’s been properly assessed and until the economy and the debt problem are in a better state would be a good idea,” she said.
Ms Allan was chosen by the
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