Tom Minear: Decisions around airport rail link aren’t as simple as it seems
We’ll get an airport rail link but it will be a huge waste of funds if it isn’t fast, regular and value for money, writes Tom Minear.
Opinion
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Daniel Andrews and Scott Morrison are about to wrap up an early Christmas present for the people of Victoria. It’s a train to Tullamarine — funded, planned and ready to be built.
Senior figures in the state and federal governments say an agreement between the leaders is imminent on the final design of the long-awaited airport rail link.
But while a bromance has blossomed between the Premier and the Prime Minister in the last six months, this decision has proven to be more difficult than just making a list and checking it twice.
The broad strokes of the project are clear. Both governments have put $5 billion on the table and want to see the rail link running west from the CBD to a new transport super-hub in Sunshine and then north to the airport.
How to make that a reality — which people are willing to pay to use — is the challenge.
It is clear the new line must be “conveniently linked with the suburban railway network” and provide “fast, cheap and convenient access to the city and suburbs”.
Those were the words of the state’s transport minister Edward Meagher in 1964, six years before the airport was opened and they still ring true today.
The complicating factor is that the airport rail link is not being built in isolation.
Instead, it is the key piece that will decide the fate of the rail network jigsaw through Melbourne’s booming western suburbs and out to Geelong, Ballarat and Bendigo.
From the federal government’s point of view, there is only one way to improve rail services to those areas.
“We think it is almost certain that we’ll need to have dedicated tunnel from basically the CBD to Sunshine, which then becomes a really important node for fast rail to be able to shoot from as well,” Federal Urban Infrastructure Minister Alan Tudge said last month.
The state government’s Western Rail Plan, released last year, indicated they were on the same page. It warned there was “limited available space” for extra services between Sunshine and the CBD and forecast “extra track capacity” would be needed.
In May this year, as Labor pumped $100 million into planning fast regional trains, it said that would “most likely” be achieved with a new airport rail tunnel.
But some in the state government appear to have cooled on the tunnel in recent months, with Victorian Transport Infrastructure Minister Jacinta Allan not killing off suggestions that airport trains could run on existing suburban tracks to Sunshine.
There are plenty of reasons why that is a bad idea. If you’ve caught airport trains in big cities around the world, you will know the best services are quick, they run regularly, they don’t require you to change trains and the purpose-built carriages have plenty of room for your bags.
Andrews was alive to those issues in September, when he stood next to Morrison and promised to build a service that is “efficient, effective and represents value for money” because if it is “slow and congested and stopping at all stations, people won’t use it”.
But the tunnel will be expensive to build and with cost blowouts already hitting major projects, some state government figures are approaching future spending cautiously.
The Sunshine route’s $8-13 billion price-tag will be maxed out if it goes underground, and even that could be a conservative estimate because of soaring construction costs.
In their new-found willingness to play nice with Andrews, Morrison and Tudge haven’t publicly pushed back hard on the importance of the tunnel and risking that key decision escaping their control.
The tunnel debate is also part of a broader tug of war between Victoria and the Commonwealth on their other infrastructure priorities. The state government wants to shoehorn the airport rail link into its ambitious Suburban Rail Loop, fuelling speculation that airport commuters would have to get out of the loop at Sunshine and board a regular metro service to reach the city.
Allan repeatedly promises to deliver an airport rail link for all Victorians, suggesting an express service to the CBD may not be her priority if it comes at the expense of commuters in the western suburbs and regional centres.
The Suburban Rail Loop isn’t the federal government’s concern. It would rather start spending the $2 billion it has promised for fast rail to Geelong, seeing the Sunshine-to-CBD tunnel as a critical part of that.
Transport bureaucrats have floated a radical way around that, sending Geelong trains to Newport and under the city via the speculative Melbourne Metro 2 project, but that seems like a longshot.
Ultimately, for Morrison and Andrews to announce their airport rail plan in the coming weeks, they will also have to agree on how these other projects can be progressed.
The wildcard in the final stages of negotiations is the $5 billion offer from a private consortium including Melbourne Airport, Metro Trains and Southern Cross station.
Their proposal, backed by super fund giant IFM Investors, is being weighed up as part of the business case and promises dedicated underground tracks delivering 20-minute express services every 10 minutes at peak times.
Ask commuters what sort of airport rail link they want — as the consortium did earlier this year — and that’s the answer they give.
Some in the state government appear cautious about accepting the consortium’s cash.
But politicians have been talking about building the airport rail link since 1958, 12 years before planes were even touching down on the runway, and now that it’s finally happening, it needs to be done properly.
If that means involving the private sector, as Malcolm Turnbull said he expected when he kickstarted this process more than 18 months ago, then so be it.
After all, this is a Christmas present we can’t return on Boxing Day.
Tom Minear is state politics editor.