Tunnel Vision With Cars

Road construction is proving to be the Bracks Government's Achilles heel.

The Labor Government appears to unable to avoiding empowering NIMBYs, the anti-car brigades and other special interest groups.  It succumbed again to these groups this week when it decided not to proceed with further investigation of a tunnel connecting the Eastern and the Tullamarine freeways.

While such a tunnel is no lay-down-misere, it clearly warrants further investigation.

The Kennett Government first proposed the project.  Although previously critical, Labor in Government agreed to investigate it and its high level Infrastructure Planning Council offered support for it.

Instead of following the Infrastructure Planning Council's recommendations to investigate the project within a statewide framework, the Government opted for a more narrowly based review.  It gave the task to the Northern Central City Corridor Study (NCCCS).  This considered it from the limited perspective of the areas just north of the city.  Clearly the effect of a tunnel on the area through which it passes needs to be considered.  However, its statewide benefits potentially overwhelm the local issues as the area functions as a major transit hub.

The NCCCS went further to bias the result against a tunnel option.  It allowed its community consultative committee to become stacked with anti-car and anti-tunnel advocates and to include few voices with a statewide perspective.  It adopted a target of reducing the proportion of total trips taken by cars.  Since a tunnel would redirect traffic from routes outside the NCCCS study area, it would necessarily violate this target and in doing so benefit the wider community.

Even so, the NCCCS could not avoid giving the tunnel high marks.  It recognised the tunnel would significantly reduce congestion in the local area and by reducing congestion help public transport demand.  It acknowledged the tunnel would not harm heritage values and would provide planners with flexibility to improve amenity values.  It also accepted that the tunnel would improve air quality and reduce noise.  Indeed, the study found "improved public transport and the east-west tunnel would best address the objective of catering to increased residential population in the inner north and surrounding area".

But the study recommended against the tunnel.  It did so partly because it failed to consider the many economic benefits it would bring to areas other than the inner north area.  In addition, it failed to consider that commercial users place a particularly high value on such a tunnel.  It also evaluated the tunnel option solely on a no-toll and no-public/private partnership basis.

Despite all these biases, the best tunnel option (the study examined three) was estimated to have a benefit/ cost ratio of 1.2:1 (benefits exceeding cost by 20 per cent).  This is high enough by itself to warrant further study.

But, under pressure by the NIMBYs, the study disregarded its own calculations and recommended against a tunnel.

For its part, the Government bowed to the wishes of a noisy group of appointees which adopted a biased, local perspective.

Given that the faults of the NCCCS are enshrined in the Government's Melbourne 2030 Planning Strategy, we can expect this process to undermine road development into the future.  So much for Government's motto of "Linking Victoria for all Victorians".