Patrick Carlyon: East West Link has become a political punching bag

Six years since it was cancelled the East West Link debacle has grown to be another sad emblem of Victoria, the No Can Do State.

Britain needed 192 years to build its Channel Tunnel. The project was always going to happen. But there was always a problem. Too costly. Too dangerous.

Will the East West Link take as long? It will be built, one day, because it is needed. It’s also kind of embarrassing to live in a city where a freeway ends with a T-intersection.

The problem, obviously, is that the project has been reduced to political lines. It’s a Liberal initiative. And it’s an ALP no-go zone.

Six years since it was cancelled, and more than two decades since the idea was first put, the EWL debacle has grown to be another sad emblem of Victoria, the No Can Do State.

The battlelines were set when the Coalition rushed through an EWL contract, then the ALP ripped it up on principle.

Outsiders marvel at the politics of these decisions. The fact of a state election determined whether Melbourne would suffer decades of gridlock. Because one side of politics backed the road, the other would not.

It cost us more than a billion dollars to not build a road. It’s a fair point, made by the Opposition, that had the contract not been ripped up, the East West Link would be finished by now.

A render of the East West Link.

The EWL has become a political punching bag, much like the airport rail link, first conceived before Tullamarine airport was completed. The rail link was doomed to the empty promises of successive governments. A good idea, everyone agreed. But too hard.

The EWL, sadly, became a point of difference between parties, a billion dollar mark of contrariness. One side wanted to be seen to be doing something big. The other, in response, marshalled the forces opposed to the concept.

Despite deepening traffic woes, the question remains reduced to partisan posturing. Vote conservative and you get a road. Vote ALP and you don’t.

For an acting premier to suggest the EWL project “does not stack up” sounds odd to those Melburnians who spend longer getting to the airport than the flight time to Sydney.

Visitors to Melbourne, heading east, can barrel down the Tullamarine Freeway, then hit Parkville for the unofficial pit stop. Their driver might make seemingly illogical choices of left, right, left in the vain pursuit of rat runs.

It’s enough to make you blush. Melbourne is blessed with flat expanses, unlike many cities, and spared major water obstacles. Yet our road network looks like bits of untied string. This supposedly thriving first-world city boasts the MCG, Melbourne Park, the NGV — and arterial roads that lead nowhere.

The one upside of lockdown was the roads. One of Melbourne’s biggest failings was smudged when we shed the clots of traffic.

Since the height of the COVID crisis, we find roadworks around every corner. Whoever makes witches hats is making a lot of money. Witches’ hats are fixtures on both main roads and side streets, as is a man or woman holding a STOP sign.

There are also plans for the North East Link, while the West Gate Tunnel project is stalled in claims of contaminated soil.

Daniel Andrews (left) and Treasurer Tim Pallas at the announcement of their decision to not to compensate the developers of the East West tunnel.

There is nothing wrong with the concepts for either project. But they are less vital than the EWL. They address the limbs of traffic circulation when a fatal clot lies at the heart.

The EWL shouldn’t be politically controversial. It should not be a Liberal tunnel. Or an ALP demand that we ignore the overwhelming evidence of our daily commute.

We have, in effect, been told that sitting at the Hoddle St lights, and estimating how many light changes we will need before we reach the front of the queue, is something we must accept, like stamp duty or other annoying taxes.

But why? Infrastructure Australia calls the EWL a high priority. The federal government will tip in $4bn.

You can endorse the North East Link and the East West Link as necessary additions. We could build one, then the other, if issues arose in construction.

Why must it be either/or?

This kind of thinking has enveloped Victoria in recent times. The state has sagged as an example of what cannot be achieved as opposed to what can be.

Where have the visions gone?

Why can’t we set lofty targets? Some of them won’t happen, certainly. But perhaps one or two innovative notions could transform our city.

They may also soften the accepted view elsewhere that Victoria doesn’t get anything done anymore.

Patrick Carlyon is a Herald Sun columnist