Let’s talk about Victoria’s transport “planning” – a term used very loosely here, like calling a Vegemite-coated toothpick a “gourmet canapé”. For decades, Melbourne’s infrastructure strategy has resembled a toddler’s finger-painting: chaotic, incoherent, and suspiciously sticky. Here’s why we’re still arguing about trains, roads, and whether the airport is secretly in another dimension.
Melbourne’s existing rail network was designed in the 1800s by people who thought “peak hour” meant a particularly lively horse race. The CBD-centric system forces everyone into a single, sweaty funnel, like sardines cosplaying as commuters. Enter the Suburban Rail Loop (SRL) – a $125B plan to drag us kicking and screaming into the 21st century. It’ll connect suburbs so far apart they might as well be in different time zones (looking at you, Cheltenham to Werribee).
Toll Road Titans: Companies like Transurban, who’d sell their grandmothers for another lane on CityLink.
Political Dinosaurs: The federal Coalition, who planned to axe $2.2B from the SRL because “trains are socialism” (actual quote pending).
NIMBYs: The same folks who’ll complain about traffic and oppose any construction near their “heritage-listed” rose bushes.
Victoria’s freeway network has more gaps than ScoMo’s climate policy. The North East Link – finally closing the “missing link” in our orbital ring – has been delayed so long, the original planners are probably haunting Parliament as ghosts. Meanwhile, the M80 upgrades are adding “smart tech”, which in VicRoads-speak means “hoping the traffic lights work this time”.
Blame the 1969 Melbourne Transportation Plan, a masterclass in car-worship that treated public transport like a leper colony. Priorities included:
Imagine being the only city in the developed world where getting to the airport requires a $70 Uber ride, a SkyBus pilgrimage, or a blood oath with a mate who owns a ute. The proposed Airport Rail has been “coming soon” since Jeff Kennett was relevant. The latest plan? A line that’ll open in 2033 – just in time for our grandkids to use it!
SkyBus Shareholders: They’ve built a cult following around their overpriced shuttle. All hail the sacred “Bus Lane”.
Sunshine NIMBYs: “But the noise!” they cry, while living next to a literal airport.
Car Lobbyists: Big Oil and toll operators have spent decades bribing – sorry, lobbying – governments to keep us addicted to petrol.
Political Spinelessness: Building a rail line takes longer than one election cycle, and why risk your job when you can just… not?
Collective Amnesia: Every time a project is announced, we all forget the last 10 failed ones. This time it’ll work! Pinky promise!
Transurban: The toll road overlords who’d charge you $50 to drive to your own driveway if they could.
SkyBus: The “temporary” airport shuttle that’s outlived disco, Blockbuster, and common sense.
Boomers Who ‘Got Theirs’: “I bought my house in 1985 for three pineapples – why should I care about your train?”
Melbourne’s transport saga is a tragicomedy where the villains win, the heroes are underfunded, and the audience is stuck on the Monash. But hey, at least we’ll always have SkyBus. Right?
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Not to mention that navigating the airport itself is a nightmare.
Sydney's above ground nightmare, thanks to Transurban and the like, has decimated the place, and the govt is looking to reel it in. In their sandstone paradise, tunneling for trains has become a positive for negotiating around all their penetrating harbours, reaches and bays. Albeit, the disasterous land waste for private vehicle luxuries have ruined its urban environment.
Although Melb is much more difficult to tunnel in, it's far from impossible. And it needs to ditch the Transurban stranglehold. The Suburban Rail Loop will certainly be expensive, but so what! It will substantially add to and benefit Greater Melbourne's public transport, and move us away from the unnecessary land-grab and suffocation of excess private vehicle usage.
PTV's urban and regional public transport network is inexpensive and well connected - the best in the country. All embellishments (incl. SRL) will be of great benefit to our huge population growth.
per Clakka's mild sledge against Sydney's roads, I'd (mildly) disagree.
Living ~15km NW of the CBD, I can get to the northern outskirts in about 20–25 minutes, and to the southern edge in under an hour. In both cases toll roads & tunnels are used. I'd contrast that with Brisbane where it can take close to two hours to go from north of the airport south to Coolangatta, depending on time of day and traffic density.
I'd also contest the view that the urban environment has been ruined. Fly into Sydney during daytime and all you can see is a sea of green covering much of the suburban areas due to street trees and parks. Newer suburbs lack the tree density and suffer accordingly, but in time they will also have considerable tree plantings offering shade and heat relief.
I don't dispute the stranglehold that Transurban have over the toll road system, it is what it is, until it isn't, and the government does offer toll relief for those whose costs are considerable. It's also a matter of fact that the last major Transurban project was a clusterf*ck extraordinaire, as acknowledged by all commentators, and a modern-day puzzle as to how it is that so many engineers and planners got it so wrong.
As to the efficiency question of the road networks, given this city's expansion of its urban footprint to the south and the northwest, it's a major burden for those who choose to live in these new districts. Southern suburban developments are heading towards 80km from the CBD, and presently there is little or no public transport in most of those areas.