By Timna Jacks
Here we go again, with yet another stoush over the East West Link.
Had former premier Denis Napthine won the 2014 election, the road would be opening to cars later this year.
But two state and federal elections later, Premier Daniel Andrews is steadfast in his refusal to revive a project he spent more than $1.1 billion to dump.
This is despite Prime Minister Scott Morrison offering up $4 billion to build the toll road, asking Labor to simply "green light" it.
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews is refusing to build the East West Link.Credit: ninevms
The toll road
Under the former Napthine government, the 18-kilometre toll road was set to be built in two stages.
The eastern section, costing $5.3 billion, links the Eastern Freeway at Hoddle Street and CityLink in Parkville, by building a six-lane road tunnel beneath Melbourne Cemetery and Royal Park.
The western part, to cost up to $10 billion, connects the Port of Melbourne precinct through West Footscray to the Western Ring Road at Sunshine West via an elevated road.
The traffic problem
The former Coalition government argued that a cross-city road bypassing the CBD would provide an alternative to the Monash and West Gate freeways, taking pressure off the West Gate Bridge.
The road's business case — which was based on traffic forecasts discredited by peer reviewers and the Victorian Auditor-General — proposed that it would deal with a shortage of east-west routes.
The document outlined that it would help deal with congestion on the Eastern Freeway, where traffic stops abruptly at traffic lights at Clifton Hill.
This causes cars to bank up on Alexandra Parade and spread across residential streets in the inner-north and inner-west.
The RACV's red spot survey shows that motorists' biggest concern is traffic on Alexandra Parade in Clifton Hill, where over 64,000 vehicles per day crawl through, at average speeds as low as 20 km/h in peak hour.
The East West Link is still listed as a high-priority initiative by Infrastructure Australia, with congestion along this corridor set to cost $144 million by 2031 (in 2011 dollars).
Peter Anderson, who speaks for Victoria’s truck lobby as head of the Victorian Transport Association, has warned that widening the Eastern Freeway to up to 24 lanes as part of the North East Link would create a need for the East West Link.
"The widening of the Eastern Freeway will feed more cars into Hoddle Street without the East West Link," he said in a position echoed by federal MP Alan Tudge.
Its impact
During the morning peak, roughly 30 per cent of motorists expected to use the East West Link were estimated to be heading into the city, according to the business case kept secret by the Coalition but later released by Premier Andrews.
This would have increased traffic congestion on some of Melbourne's busiest arterials in the inner-north, exacerbating a problem that the road aimed to fix.
Moreland and Yarra City Councils, who were part of the Supreme Court appeal against the road in 2014, are already sounding the alarm about the road's possible resurrection.
“This toll road will only worsen traffic in Yarra," Yarra's mayor Danae Bosler warned.
It also needed the compulsory acquisition of 96 homes and 33 businesses.
Doesn't stack up
The road's traffic forecasts were exposed in the business case as being unreliable by peer reviewers, while a VicRoads whistleblower said the projections ''smacks of a desire to enhance the quantum of benefits''.
Meanwhile, industry groups were calling for the western section to be prioritised, which was likely to be a better bang for the taxpayer's buck, the Victorian Auditor-General reported.
The road's economic benefit was also a key problem.
An initial economic assessment of the East West Link in 2013 found that it would return an abysmal 45 cents for every dollar spent.
This was improved slightly to a loss-making return of 84 cents for every dollar, after a series of "wider" economic benefits were controversially factored in.
These extra benefits are not typically included in cost-benefit analyses and were "unusually high", according to the Victorian Auditor-General in a scathing review of the project.
Eventually, a new business case bumped up the road's value to a benefit-cost ratio of $1.40 for every $1 invested. This was after separate transport projects such as the CityLink widening were included.
The politics
After retaining a swag of eastern seats targeted in its East West Link push in this federal election, it's now up to the Morrison government to explain the kind of road it wants to build.
Is it the East West Link proposed by Napthine and dumped in 2015?
Or is it the pre-election alternative proposed by then state opposition leader Matthew Guy last year, to go underground from the Eastern Freeway and link to an elevated section of the West Gate Tunnel?
The project's cost also needs clarification.
Prior to the election, the federal government said the private sector would stump up an extra $3 billion.
But it has since acknowledged that a business case must be updated, and this may provide more "accurate figures".
Meanwhile, Victoria's Opposition Leader Michael O'Brien is accusing Premier Andrews of trumping "partisan politics" over "public interest" in refusing to build the road, but the same was said about the Coalition four years ago.
Mr Andrews, for his part, has claimed credit for saving Victorians from a dud project, albeit at the cost of $1 billion. But axing the road was also based on poor advice that the road plan could be ripped up at no cost, the watchdog found.
Alternatives
The RACV wants a "multi-modal" solution to the congestion problem, meaning the project should cater for motorists, public transport users, cyclists and pedestrians.
Infrastructure Victoria's 30-year strategy said "longer-term links" along the corridor are needed within the latter part of a 15-30 year period, but hasn't said what this should be.
RMIT planning expert Jago Dodson called for an end to plans to build more mega roads.
He said that Melbourne Metro 2, a rail line the Andrews government has not yet committed to linking Clifton Hill to Fishermans Bend via the CBD, would allow for more cross-city trips.