The Age: Brumby’s $40bn plan to get Victoria moving (8th December, 2008)

Plans to buy 52 trains and 50 trams for Melbourne, as well as 20 trains for regional Victoria, will be unveiled today as John Brumby seeks to lay claim to the title of “the public transport Premier”.

The $4.2 billion buy-up of rolling stock will be accompanied by a promise to build Melbourne’s first metro-style underground suburban rail line — a 17 kilometre cross-city tunnel from Caulfield to Footscray via St Kilda Road and inner Melbourne — as well as a new surface rail line through the rapidly growing western suburbs and a long-awaited extension of the Epping line in the north.

The Age believes the Government’s transport blueprint, to be revealed today, will involve nearly $40 billion of purchases and projects. Mr Brumby will claim the plan will create tens of thousands of jobs and transform Victoria’s road network and public transport system into Australia’s best.

But the Opposition will claim the timeline for many of the major projects is so long that there can be no guarantee Labor will deliver them. Commuters on the Eastern Freeway will have to wait years for relief from the daily congestion as they hit Hoddle Street, with cabinet rejecting a recommendation from its transport adviser, Sir Rod Eddington, for a $9 billion road tunnel from the end of the Eastern Freeway under North Carlton to the western suburbs. Continue Reading…