The Victorian Government pushes on, despite the project very obviously going to cost substantially more and raise substantially less money than promised.
This is coupled with a #housingsupply announcement – approval of a 317 BTR unit building in Clayton.
A couple of notable things about the media approach over the weekend:
1️⃣The DFU approval was granted on 17 April 2025 (https://lnkd.in/ghra_ZHE), but the announcement waited until it could be linked to SRL to justify the "housing project" sell.
2️⃣Ignore that this site has been in the works by MAKE Property Group since they bought it in 2016 (i.e. before SRL existed) because Clayton Station is already an activity centre! A version of this project would likely have gone ahead irrespective of SRL as it's right next to an existing train station.
3️⃣Include cherry-picked announcements of theoretical time savings worked out by Department of Transport and Planning for a handful of trips (as lovingly parroted by the ABC here: https://lnkd.in/g8NHKrxf). Of course, forgetting that overinvestment in this one mega-project will objectively make virtually every other type of travel worse over the course of its development compared with other interventions.
4️⃣Talking point that 600,000 cars will be taken off the roads each day. This is misleading or simply wrong for several reasons, as per the KPMG Australia business case:
a) The reduction is in car trips, not vehicles. As most vehicles take multiple trips per day, it's probably closer to 200,000 vehicles (or fewer – in new estates you assume 6-8 trips per day per dwelling).
b) The expected reduction in trips is by 2056 – 20 years into SRL's lifespan, which also assumes higher ridership than what we are seeing/pre-dating WFH.
c) The total purported mode shift between private vehicles and public transport if ALL of SRL (inc. airport) is constructed is 1.0%. Yes, just one per cent. For 100 thousand million dollaridoos. Are we seriously to think one couldn't spend that money on other things, like bigger and longer trains on existing stations, more frequent and longer trains, above ground rail options, and buses to get a bigger overall PT network to Victorians?
More and more spin, and contracts continuing to be signed on behalf of the Victorian taxpayer irrespective of #feasibility.
But of course, according to Jacinta Allan "we simply can't afford not to build the SRL".
🤔The more you look into this project, the worse it gets.