Thoughts on the Eddington Report

The Eddington Report on East West transport links will be released today. The details have been splashed around the media over the last few days. As expected there will be a recommendation for an East West tunnel to join the Eastern freeway to Citylink and then over to the western suburbs joining up at Ballarat or even Geelong Rd.

The surprise is that Eddington has recommended that no such exits be built. He has accepted the argument that any exit ramps aimed towards the CBD would increase downstream congestion. This makes the project much more marginal for private investors. The economic model of the financial backers of the project was that money was to be made funnelling and tolling traffic into the CBD. It therefore makes it unlikely that the tunnel can be funded as a private sector toll road.

Therefore without significant State or Federal funding the tunnel will never be built. I also expect the poor cost benefit of the project will see the tunnel project fall over. There just is not much traffic that flows from western Melbourne to the Eastern freeway or vice a versa.

Eddington also proposes a very large rail project. This involves an underground metro link between Caulfield station, through to North Melbourne and then Footscray stations. In the long term this project is probably necessary to increase the capacity of the loop. However the debate will be whether there are more worthwhile rail projects in the short to medium term. Certainly outer areas of Melbourne will want to see extensions to rail provision ahead of increased capacity.

The cost of Eddington’s recommendation will be around $20 billion. More importantly there is a desire by the Brumby Government for an extended debate.

As a supporter of sustainable transport it is important that the debate is broad and looks not at just the issue of more roads and rail but the conditions that will allow for mobility with a reduction of car dependency. We need to look at world best practice and we need to at the transport divide in Melbourne. A divide between the public transport, walking and cycling friendly inner areas and the car dependent outer suburbs.