Six years after Andrews surprised everyone with his SRL plan, there are fresh concerns about priorities

Labor is steaming ahead with its Suburban Rail Loop despite concerns over finances, funding and a need for better services in the west. A “why don’t we have both” taco meme won’t work now.

Long before contracts were inked to kickstart a new $35bn rail line in Melbourne’s southeast, Jacinta Allan was briefed about how many people would actually be hopping aboard its trains.

The briefing showed forecast passenger demand between Cheltenham and Box Hill — where the first stage of the 90km Suburban Rail Loop was planned — was fairly limited to the year 2051, but that demand in the western suburbs and growth areas was off the charts.

Despite the subtle warning about its transport priorities, Labor committed to the SRL, which it wants to use to drive population growth in Melbourne’s middle suburbs.

And it remains full steam ahead, despite deteriorating state finances and growing questions about how the tunnel between Cheltenham and Box Hill will be funded.

Former Premier Daniel Andrews. Picture: Valeriu Campan

It is almost six years since former premier Daniel Andrews surprised everyone with the SRL plan; not even Victoria’s top transport bureaucrat knew about it when he announced it in August, 2018.

A few months after that announcement, and just before the 2018 state election, he also promised to develop a new Western Rail Plan with a “full separation of regional and metro services on the Geelong and Ballarat lines” and electrified metro lines to Melton and Wyndham Vale.

This plan was not a secret, and had been advocated for years to avoid crippling congestion across the city’s booming west.

Six years after these two announcements, only one is being pursued with any vigour, and it ain’t the one in the fastest growing parts of Melbourne.

Mr Andrews referenced a taco meme about “having both”, but it won’t work this time around. Picture: Supplied

In 2022, when there was a brief debate about whether funding for the SRL should be paused and money invested in hospitals instead, Mr Andrews responded with a glib meme based on a taco advertisement that says “why don’t we have both?”.

Labor effectively used that line for voters in the western suburbs, too, by continuing to promise to provide more, and faster, services.

State MPs in those growth areas know a “why don’t we have both” meme won’t work a second time.