Category: Letters to the editor
-
Letter to The Age: The airport rail that got away
Victorians recall with regret the Allan government’s announcement postponing the Airport Rail project. It was in the same 2024 budget that affirmed a $26 billion price tag for the North East Link, after its $10 billion blowout was revealed in December 2023. It doesn’t take much imagination to conclude the one followed directly from the…
-
Letter to The Age: Government must be accountable
The ongoing contractual payments to Metro Trains to cover lost revenue due to higher work-from-home rates show how misleading it is to argue governments can shift “revenue risk” to the private sector by privatising public services. It is ultimately governments who remain accountable for the standard of public goods and services, whether the ultimate provider…
-
Letter to The Age: Tax misuse
While it’s appropriate governments incentivise the shift from petrol and diesel cars to cleaner transport, FBT exemptions for personal use of motor vehicles are the very worst way of doing so. FBT tax breaks mean taxpayers meet up to a third of all purchase and operating costs, and all GST, for personal vehicles, with the…
-
Short-term thinking – Geelong Advertiser
Funding further duplication of the Barwon Heads Road is a sad example of short-term thinking regarding transport planning in Greater Geelong. Politicians are keen to finance road expansion, rather than investing in an effective solution to our growing congestion problem; public transport. Additional road space provides only temporary relief before it fills up again, increasing…
-
Letter to The Age: Hostility to rail projects
Back in 2008, we were optimistic. It looked like Infrastructure Australia might break the long-standing hostility to rail projects on the part of state and federal bureaucracies, and their obsession with motorways, despite none ever fulfilling their congestion-busting promises. Unfortunately, it has reverted to form. We can agree the Suburban Rail Link business case lacks…
-
NE Link: Waste of money
When Infrastructure Victoria called the North East Link a “priority road project”, it was because its consultants gave the road a highly favourable initial assessment. The report last year by KPMG, Arup and Jacobs estimated the project (including the Eastern Freeway and M80 widening) would cost between $4.8 and $7.1 billion. The benefits were stated…
-
Remember Doncaster
Northeast has the worst traffic? It should remind planners that the idea for trains to Doncaster Hill springs from a genuine need long recognised by the community.
-
Advice not so neutral
Infrastructure Australia began life as a disinterested adviser. Its board comprised independent experts, economists and planners alongside industry representatives and public-sector managers. But it has subtly morphed into a forum for big business interests to lobby governments from “inside the tent”. Lobbyists and privatisation advocates now dominate the board. Its latest report tries to breathe…
-
Deja vu on road plan
The budget appears set to transfer $1.5 billion of public funds from one big road with no political mandate or business case to another (“East West Link replacement likely …”, 11/5). If the government had any consideration for the Victorian public, this money would revert to its original 2013 purpose, helping fund the project that…
-
Road-building feeds the congestion monster
Liveable for how long? Not only is the federal government to give $1 billion towards building the western half of the East West Link without a shred of a business case (unless we count the Eddington Report’s 45¢ return in the dollar), Victorians are to be slugged with an extra year of tolls so that…