North East Link is shaping up as the biggest mistake of the Andrews government’s autocratic approach to transport infrastructure.
It has many problems that will eclipse those of the West Gate Tunnel.
The taxpayer will take the risk of its failure to attract traffic, and it’s not worth the massive impacts on the local people and environment.
The West Gate Tunnel doesn’t stack up and it should never have been approved.
Its economic benefits were overstated in the business case. Rather than $1.30, the project will probably return only $0.60 per dollar invested.
It doesn’t stack up financially either. Transurban needs $2.6 billion from the public purse, plus more toll revenue from CityLink, to make it work.
The Government’s assessment of the West Gate Tunnel contained significant errors in the transport modelling and the cost-benefit analysis that made the project seem a lot better than it was. It should never have been approved, and I predict that when it eventually opens it won’t deliver the claimed benefits.
Let me be very clear about this – the system of rational and objective planning for transport is completely broken in Victoria.
Politics has trumped planning, and there’s no guarantee that the chosen investments are the right ones.
It’s nothing short of pork-barreling in the extreme.
William McDougall 