Transport academic describes Opposition leader’s promise to spend $1.5 billion on the East-West Link tunnel a "drop in the ocean"
Ruza Zivkusic-Aftasi | August 7, 2012
A transport academic has described the Opposition Leader Tony Abbott’s promise to spend $1.5 billion on the East-West Link tunnel in Melbourne as a “drop in the ocean”, saying more money is needed to transform the city’s transport network.
RMIT University lecturer in transport planning Paul Mees says Abbott’s pledge to commence the project, if he becomes prime minister, is unreal due to insufficient being money set aside.
“It is very irresponsible for the future prime minister to be offering money to a project that hasn’t even passed its cost benefit analysis yet because what we know is that when half of the project was put forward for funding in 2009 it failed the cost benefit analysis and it’s quite likely that the larger and much more expensive version will also fail the cost benefit analysis,” Mees says.
Abbott recently promised federal money for the 18km link which is worth $5 billion and would carry 100,000 vehicles a day.
“It’s just a drop in the ocean,” Mees says of Abbott’s proposal.
“The basic problem with this project is that the money to build it isn’t there, it can’t be raised through tolls because the tolls would have to be set so high that people wouldn’t want to pay them.
“It can’t be raised through the private sector because too many similar projects have gone broke in Sydney and Brisbane and I don’t think the State Government has got a spare $10 billion lying around either so their last chance to build it was the vain hope that the Federal Government would fund the majority of the cost of the project.”
Victorian Premier Ted Baillieu believes the East-West Link is crucial to keeping the city moving and requires Commonwealth assistance. The project is a centrepiece of his government’s funding submission to Infrastructure Australia, the body that advises the Federal Government on infrastructure projects.
