Calls to pause work on $120bn Rail Loop

An expert has warned the $120bn Suburban Rail Loop project is based on pre-pandemic projections which may no longer reflect Victoria’s transport needs.

An expert has called for the project to be halted while new studies are done. Picture: Suburban Rail Loop Authority

The $120bn Suburban Rail Loop project should be paused while Melbourne’s growth projections are reassessed amid the effects of the pandemic, a transport expert says.

Grattan Institute transport and cities program director Marion Terrill said the massive project’s business case was based on rapid population growth that has since been slashed due to negative overseas migration.

“The benefits are underpinned by the old patterns of work and travel that we had. The world is different now, we don’t really know ... whether we’re going to go back to something like we used to do before,” Ms Terrill said.

“Heavy rail is really rigid, not like a bus, you can’t really change your mind if the conditions don’t really warrant it.”

The Andrews government’s SRL project envisages a 90km orbital rail system that would run underground between Cheltenham and Werribee, at a cost of up to $120bn.

The first section to be built, SRL East, would run 26km between Box Hill and Cheltenham and cost up to $34bn.

Ms Terrill said the project came about in a secretive way and the government had offered scant information about it “beyond the glossy pictures”.

Melbourne University associate professor in urban planning Crystal Legacy queried why SRL construction would start in the southeast and not the west where proper public transport services were lacking.

“That’s a critical area based on its growth and current high levels of dependency on the car, and not equal access to good quality public transport,” she said.

“If we were prepared to redesign our bus systems to make them more direct, to better integrate them with trams and trains, that might be an important way forward.”

Monash University chair of public transport Professor Graham Currie said SRL was a visionary project that was not designed for today’s situation.

“It’s designed for a future tomorrow where Melbourne meets its growth potential - certainly the pre-Covid path it was on - to end up something like a Tokyo by 2050,” he said.

“If you have a growth pattern like that, then this pattern of only having one CBD and low- density development in the outer suburbs - it’s just not very workable for a massive city with that scale of development.”

Swinburne University transport expert Dr Ian Woodcock said the current SRL plan didn’t go nearly far enough to meet the need for improved, sustainable accessibility across the metropolitan area.

“There are shortcomings in the proposed overall route, especially in the northern and western suburbs, along with a lack of stations,” he said.

“It is also not yet clear that the best form of rail vehicles for the type of service envisaged has been chosen. The potential benefits of the SRL rely on improved access to stations via walking, cycling and buses, yet plans to achieve this have not yet been made publicly available.”

Transport Minister Jacinta Allan said Melbourne would have a population of nine million by 2056, the size of London today.

“Our transport network will need to cope with an extra 11.8 million trips over that timeframe and there will be an 80 per cent increase in private vehicle trips per day,” she said.

“If we don’t start investing and planning now in our public transport network to provide more direct connection across the city, our network will simply not meet this growing demand that is coming at us down the pipe for our services.”