Melbourne's Fourth (Labor) Transport Blueprint

So here we are.

Is This Our Future?

Uncle John Brumby who is a self-styled action man has commissioned a bunch of reports. Woo-hoo!

The plan is, basically, a let-down. Two of Melbourne's most psycho roads, Hoddle Street and Alexandra Parade/Princes Street, both fed by the overloaded Eastern Freeway, will be left untouched. Hoddle Street gets a study, which will cost $5m, to decide if under/overpasses are viable. Fat chance. They won't do it because they don't have the nuts. Why? The biggest piece of the Eddington plan was the tunnel from the end of the Eastern Freeway that would go under the city and end up in the West.

It gets worse. All they've got for the Eastern suburbs is - drum roll, please, because this is awesome - more buses. So anyone coming down the Eastern Freeway has no hope for trains or light rail for the next forty years, basically.

The government (and the bovine media) are hailing this as a transport revolution. It's nothing. It's not even treading water. The initial stage of the metro will stop at Domain Road. Domain Road! The bulk of passengers need to keep going down to the Dandenong Road interchange.

The Maribyrnong tunnel is actually a bloody good idea a long time coming, I will applaud that. But the rest? Vapour. Three more years of this (at least) and if Brumby is booted out on his arse, the axe will fall immediately.

There won't be the money available to do the metro anyway, so kiss it goodbye. Private public partnerships should be dead if they aren't already because nobody is going to extend the credit to make it all happen after the series of disasters in Australia, the only bright spot being Citylink.