Second cross-city tunnel trumps Suburban Rail Loop: experts

A powerful coalition of transport groups, councils and planning academics is urging the Andrews government to prioritise a long-promised rail tunnel connecting Melbourne’s north and west suburbs over its ambitious Suburban Rail Loop.

Among them is the RACV, which wants the government to throw its support behind building the Melbourne Metro 2 project.

But the government said it was pressing on with the Suburban Rail Loop, after it took the plan to last year's election.

The Metro 2 underground line was long-expected to be the follow-up to the Metro Tunnel, a new rail link to open in 2025.

The Metro 2 project, to cost between $12 billion and $20 billion, would create a new underground line between Newport and Clifton Hill.

It would see trains running to the fledgling suburb of Fishermans Bend, where 80,000 residents and 80,000 workers are expected by 2050.

First floated in 2012, Metro 2 was confirmed in a government masterplan for Fishermans Bend last year.

But three months before last year’s state election, Premier Daniel Andrews revealed the more ambitious $50 billion “Suburban Rail Loop”.

A hit with voters, the project was conceived in secret within an agency called Development Victoria. The state’s transport bureaucracy knew nothing of the plan until moments before Mr Andrews posted about it on Facebook.

A range of influential transport and planning groups say while that project has merit, it is at risk of knocking out the more important Metro 2 project.

The RACV’s Peter Kartsidimas said Metro 2 should be a high priority because it would provide much-needed relief on the Mernda and Werribee rail lines.

“No single project will solve the enormous pressure population growth will put on Melbourne,” he said, but the second metro project would provide far more trains where they were badly needed.

Influential transport think tank the Rail Futures Institute also backed Metro 2. “The Suburban Rail Loop has a hefty price tag and it would be unfortunate if it were to crowd out a whole range of other good projects,” secretary Bill Russell said.

Transport Infrastructure Minister Jacinta Allan was asked why the Suburban Rail Loop was the government's focus when so many transport experts said it would add less benefit than the cheaper Metro 2.

A spokeswoman for Ms Allan said: "We’re getting on with the massive pipeline of election commitments we promised Victorians to get them where they need to go safer and sooner.”

The councils to benefit most from Metro 2's construction, Melbourne, Port Phillip and Hobsons Bay, all said it should top the government’s transport agenda.

Lord Mayor Sally Capp said Metro 2 was badly needed, because the cross-city rail link would connect "universities and municipalities, running from the growth suburbs of Werribee in the west to Mernda in the North, via the central city and Fishermens Bend".

Port Phillip mayor Dick Gross said Metro 2 was crucial to Fishermans Bend's success. “If they don’t get it in quickly they’re really undermining [it]."

He said the Metro 2 project shouldn't be pushed aside in favour of the Suburban Rail Loop because while parts of it were crucial – "like Monash and Box Hill" – other parts weren't.

Hobsons Bay mayor Jonathon Marsden said Metro 2 was crucial to providing an alternative to “choke points” in Melbourne’s inner-west around Yarraville and Footscray.

The government’s Infrastructure Victoria in 2016 said planning should be underway for Metro 2 because extra train services would soon be needed.

Melbourne University transport lecturer John Stone said the Suburban Rail Loop's “enthusiastic reception” showed Melburnians wanted better public transport.

He said, while the real choice was between continuing to build toll roads and improving public transport, that it was “frightening” the $50 billion Suburban Rail Loop was conceived without the transport bureaucracy. “It’s no way to run transport planning.”

RMIT urban policy professor Jago Dodson said the Metro 2 project was urgently needed because Fishermans Bend risked having no heavy rail connection.

The Public Transport Users Association's Daniel Bowen said Metro 2 was more worthwhile because it allowed more trains to run to Werribee and Mernda, relieving train overcrowding in rapidly growing areas.

The Committee for Melbourne’s Clive Dwyer said Victoria needed a carefully considered transport plan, “rather than a series of one-off infrastructure announcements”, to drive certainty around planning and population settlement.