How many east/west MTB trails could you build for $640million?

[Knuckles]

Infrastructure Australia, an independent body, set up to be non-political, rated the return on investment to be 49 cents per dollar invested.

You don't fix road congestion by building more roads.

The previous government wouldn't release details on the project because the numbers didn't stack up. And then one of them signed a side letter guaranteeing the project consortium a billion dollars in if the project got canned. So much unethical behavior from the Napthine government it is astounding. There needs to be an avenue for the unelected to get an enquiry up and running into underhanded behavior by politicians. This example is a prime candidate.

Daniel Andrews has done exactly what he said he would do. Uncommon for a politician these days. Other politicians should take note.

As for $680 million down the tubes Ridenparadise, I'd like to know where you got your numbers from?
What I have read is that the money that has been paid to the consortium has been for work done up to the point that the project was stopped. The figure is more like $330 million. The Napthine govt should foot the bill for this.

While I agree with you, you do realise that any government footing a bill, involves us footing the bill?

On the issue of roads reducing congestion, correct, they don't, (unless you are referring to toll roads, which do reduce congestion, on themselves. Just look at eastlink, it's a ghost town) they just force the congestion to other, non arterial byways which are even less able to handle the volume.

Mass transport, while not a magic bullet is the best case scenario, for a number of reasons, not excluding road congestion. A dedicated light rail link, running east/west would do more to reduce commute times than a 6 lane dual carriage way.

The major issue with Melbourne's PT system is its radial design, forcing commuters to travel inbound from a satellite station to a central hub, then switch trains to travel outbound to a second satellite station. Essentially doubling comute distance and time. This worked fine when the population more or less lived in the outlying areas and worked relatively centralised area.

No matter what your excuse, commuting by car is the most inefficient and wasteful mode of transport imaginable, the best solution would be to look at dedicated links running laterally to the current rail design, wether that involves new light rail, priority bus lanes or even dedicated bus only roads, someone needs to do some serious engineering before we whack in another barely used, expensive bandaid.

 

[Mywifesirrational]

And I need a freeway from my house to work and then to my friends houses and my favorite bar too. What is your point?

Not going to go into details here as everyone else has chipped in. But it didn't stack up financially and there are better options. Public transport is one, but the obvious one is the missing link between western ring and eastlink at a fraction of the costs and disruption. The east west will not resolve traffic woes if you're going into the city (or through it). It will probably make it worse.

better options, can't park my truck on a train...

Do you think only have one viable route across metropolitan Melbourne makes sense? I understand that more roads = more cars, there will never be enough lanes, but currently one accident can gridlock the entire of Melbourne.

Completely agree about the ring road, makes little sense to have freeways just end at massive bottlenecks.

Would also love better public transport and a cross city express option (pretty sure that ones in the works?) but public transport infrastructure has been ignore for so long, another tunnel is the same as another road, the signals for trains is so piss poor its all bottle necked anyway.

 

[John U]

Love your way of thinking Knuckles. I would love to see a rim rail put in to join the spokes of the current rail system. Where these cross would be a perfect place to establish satellite business activity centres. It would take some massive stones for a government to have this kind of vision and push it through.

I am aware that we are paying for that work. I would like to see it billed directly to public servants who were responsible for it. I would be guessing that some of the arsehattery we have witnessed from them over this project was done to line up a cushy well paying job with the consortium in their post political life. Our taxes are not for lining up cushy jobs for these grubs.

 

[Knuckles]

Completely agree about the ring road, makes little sense to have freeways just end at massive bottlenecks.

Stupidly, bottlenecks are designed into Freeways, as a way of controlling traffic flow. While there have been some improvements on this front (variable speed limits anyone?) bottlenecks are still the go to way of regulating traffic volume on un-signaled arterial roads.

 

[Haakon]

Love your way of thinking Knuckles. I would love to see a rim rail put in to join the spokes of the current rail system. Where these cross would be a perfect place to establish satellite business activity centres. It would take some massive stones for a government to have this kind of vision and push it through.

I am aware that we are paying for that work. I would like to see it billed directly to public servants who were responsible for it. I would be guessing that some of the arsehattery we have witnessed from them over this project was done to line up a cushy well paying job with the consortium in their post political life. Our taxes are not for lining up cushy jobs for these grubs.

Don't blame the public serveants - they're just trying to do the best they can under some seriously questionable political decisions.

The Liberals signing that compensation letter rigjt before an election was shit style... Totally corrupt.

As a Melburnian, I welcome the relatively good deal they struck to get out of it despite the booby traps that were left. Public transport needs a lot of love, not more bloody roads!!

 

[Mywifesirrational]

Stupidly, bottlenecks are designed into Freeways, as a way of controlling traffic flow. While there have been some improvements on this front (variable speed limits anyone?) bottlenecks are still the go to way of regulating traffic volume on un-signaled arterial roads.

The bottleneck is fine if you heading into the CBD area, but if your traveling across the entire of Melbourne such as eastern freeway to the airport, the bottleneck is an economic liability.

 

[John U]

Don't blame the public serveants - they're just trying to do the best they can under some seriously questionable political decisions.

if that is true then replace public servants with politicians.

 

[Knuckles]

The bottleneck is fine if you heading into the CBD area, but if your traveling across the entire of Melbourne such as eastern freeway to the airport, the bottleneck is an economic liability.

Oh, for sure. Simply explains how lazy civil engineers rely on design solutions developed in the 50s to solve issues that didn't exist or weren't nearly as bad bad back then.

 

[rangersac]

$339 mill is a lot of coin. But a LOT less than the $15-17 Billion that was estimated for the entire project (which going on past infrastructure projects would probably have blown out by 10-20%). What stank about the whole project was the political stitch up by the Napthine govt. despite Infrastructure Australia recommending that there were higher priority projects which provided a better return for the money invested. Congestion wasn't going to be solved by a tunnel that ran across town, the bottleneck at the end of the Eastern exists because most of the traffic is heading for town, or the nearby northern suburbs, not the west. After the debacle that was the desal plant, thank fuck the government had sense to pull the pin on this one before saddling taxpayers with another 30 years of pain for bugger all return. Oh and before someone calls me out on it I grew up in Melbourne, but saw the light and left!

 

[silentbutdeadly]

Oh, for sure. Simply explains how lazy civil engineers rely on design solutions developed in the 50s to solve issues that didn't exist or weren't nearly as bad bad back then.

Civil engineers are only responding to a specification and budget supplied to them by ministerial advisers via interactions between ministers, party political warlords and departmental heads.

If the specification and budget are compromised then it should come as no surprise that the design is a throwback...


Oh and given the OP's original figure for the East West contract demolition came from the front page of the Herald Sun...I'd not hang my hat on it. It was their political masters that signed the damn contract just two weeks before the caretaker period and allowed the compo claim clause in it to stand as a big FU to the then Opposition

 

[99_FGT]

So why was the project scrapped? From what I read the Funding is there, so why not finish it?
Then do what qld did with the clem, and sell it off when they realised that no-body wanted to use it. :tape2:

Sold off, or bailed out. It was "taken over" by Queensland motorways, which at the time was owned by the state government. Guess what, the man at the helm of Brisbane when Clem7 was built was now running the state.
Qld motorways was subsequently sold off to Transurban, and the funds for that freed up revenue needed to build Legacy Way... Which looks set to go the same way unless they can keep the tolls under about $3.
Don't be fooled, the ratepayers in Brisbane, whether they use or even benefit from the toll roads, pay for them. Just have a look at the go-between, 2 lanes each way, and the only reason it is any quicker than going around is because it gets a preferential light cycle.
Al..

 

[Knuckles]

Civil engineers are only responding to a specification and budget supplied to them by ministerial advisers

They're actually only cutting and pasting specifications from the road authority guidelines, in this case Vic Roads, which as a whole are horrendously outdated. Any other documentation, such as Australia Standards for example, have set revision time frames and require industry consultation before republishing. The Vic road technical documents are an authority unto themselves, and the slavish adherence to the methods contained in them is the reason the never get revised. So many test methods required apparatus which are no longer commercially available, due to the manufacturer being in territories that changed the guidelines years ago. A few years ago, I had to rebuild a piece of equipment that we got 2nd hand at nearly double what it cost new, plus the extra cost of having parts made for it. For a shitty test we probably do twice a year.........

Anyway after the rant, what I'm saying is our governments seem to rely on the accepted solutions, developed to solve problems that existed over half a century ago, rather than investing in something that will have relevance today, let alone in another 50 years and millions of extra residents.

This includes slapping in a new bit of pavement as a stopgap.

 

[silentbutdeadly]

...what I'm saying is our governments seem to rely on the accepted solutions, developed to solve problems that existed over half a century ago, rather than investing in something that will have relevance today, let alone in another 50 years and millions of extra residents.

That's exactly what they do. Mainly because they are even more innovation averse than the people that vote for them. Innovation represents a political risk...can't have that.

 

[Flow-Rider]

Sold off, or bailed out. It was "taken over" by Queensland motorways, which at the time was owned by the state government. Guess what, the man at the helm of Brisbane when Clem7 was built was now running the state.
Qld motorways was subsequently sold off to Transurban, and the funds for that freed up revenue needed to build Legacy Way... Which looks set to go the same way unless they can keep the tolls under about $3.
Don't be fooled, the ratepayers in Brisbane, whether they use or even benefit from the toll roads, pay for them. Just have a look at the go-between, 2 lanes each way, and the only reason it is any quicker than going around is because it gets a preferential light cycle.
Al..

Them jobs were just cash cows, lots of mistakes were made and a lot of money just vanished.

 

[Haakon]

Yeah, wow.

There are two responses to jetstart: spend money on improving public transport and reducing your internal princess.

Don't mean to sound like (too much of) a dick here but there is a lot there that seems like a bit of a whinge that is hard to be sympathetic about:

- walk the 1km to the bus stop
- potentially already having people in my personal space
- idiots blaring music on their shitty iphone headphones
- the smell of the hipster
- I passed out from the heat/pressure/smell
- an incubator for germs

Sorry man but there's a pretty monumental amount of 'precious' going on there. Much of the rest of your problems are what extra spending on improving public transport would aim to fix. That's the whole point.

Was about to write that, but you beat me to it...

"public transport is crappy" does not mean we should spend more on roads. It means we should spend more on public transport. Driving is a luxury, not a right.

First world problems...

 

[Haakon]

if that is true then replace public servants with politicians.

Go for it. Trust me, they annoy the public servants more than the public.

 

[John U]

Go for it. Trust me, they annoy the public servants more than the public.

I meant in that particular post. I didn't mean that public servants should actually be replaced with politicians. I am quite sure that with all the downsizing going on that quite a few public servants are doing it quite hard in their jobs, with little thanks for doing so.

 

[Jesterarts]

Was about to write that, but you beat me to it...

"public transport is crappy" does not mean we should spend more on roads. It means we should spend more on public transport. Driving is a luxury, not a right.

First world problems...

Again, suggesting that spending more in public transport is the solution to congestion is naive and one eyed.

If that is the case, explain to me why the likes of London, Tokyo and Paris are absolute grid lock in peak hour?

Their public transport systems are amazing. Yet big surprise, congested as hell.

Also, comment like 'first world problems' are a bit stupid. Odours I have first world problems, I live in a country that is first world. What other types of problems would I have?

 

[The Duckmeister]

PT isn't the solution, it is one of several.

As for those European cities you mention, well the population of each of those is a very considerable proportion of our entire national population.....

The thing that proponents of East-West Link completely fail to comprehend is that at peak times the bulk of the traffic is not trying to get around the city, it's trying to get into the city, onto roads that are already choked beyond capacity. All it would have done is create a very expensive carpark linked to the other very expensive carparks that ring the city.

 

[Jesterarts]

PT isn't the solution, it is one of several.

As for those European cities you mention, well the population of each of those is a very considerable proportion of our entire national population.....

The thing that proponents of East-West Link completely fail to comprehend is that at peak times the bulk of the traffic is not trying to get around the city, it's trying to get into the city, onto roads that are already choked beyond capacity. All it would have done is create a very expensive carpark linked to the other very expensive carparks that ring the city.

Any supporting data or just making stuff up?

Never knew so many freight trucks and trades people wanted to get into the city each day/morning.

I do agree that PT investment is only part of the solution. As are roads and better city planning.