So despite climate change, Australia’s federal government has just committed an extra $3.25 billion into building a toll road and a 20-lane freeway widening.
For those who wonder why Aussies think toll roads are a scam (https://aus.social/@[email protected]/112405373613706682), here’s a great example of why.
"Pouring an extra $3.25 billion worth of federal funds into Melbourne’s North East Link is a good use of taxpayer money, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has insisted, despite the project’s cost doubling just a few months ago.
…
"The North East Link – which includes 6½ kilometres of tunnels – will stretch from Bulleen to Greensborough. It will widen the Eastern Freeway by up to 20 lanes.
"Allan revealed in December that the 10-kilometre toll road had more than doubled in cost since it was first announced.
“The toll road was initially budgeted at $10 billion and reassessed in 2019 at $15 billion. But the government revealed last year that the updated cost estimate was $26 billion.”
@fuck_cars #Urbanism #Auspol #Vicpol #roads #UrbanPlanning #transport #cities #Melbourne #Naarm #Victoria #Australia
Cool, can we have a train line to the airport instead though?
No surprise, Australia’s government has been outright climate hostile.
With the More Gas Strategy they announced today, there’s no way to pretend this government gives any fucks about mitigating climate change.
@scottmatter @ajsadauskas @fuck_cars or the fact that FF will cost so much more in the near future. This system is setting us up to fail very hard.
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2024-04-15/the-oil-crash-is-coming-sooner-than-we-think/
@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars We have one of those. Hardly anyone locally uses it because the tolls are too expensive. It’s been all disadvantage to us, getting in between us and the places we actually want to go.
Was there a realistic alternative, though?
Hey, maybe a $26 billion road project could have just been a rail project instead?
Rail?
We need to take cars off the road, not induce more traffic, which is all adding additional lanes does.
@AllNewTypeFace Of course there were.
For commuters:
* More densification around existing stations and tram lines instead of suburban sprawl.
* Upgrading buses across Melbourne to a 10-minute minimum frequency and straightening out existing bus routes.
* Rolling out high-capacity signalling and automatic train control across the Melbourne suburban rail network
* Building Metro 2 from Newport to Clifton Hill would double the number of trains that can run on the Hurstbridge and Mernda lines.
* Building the Doncaster Railway.
* Building the Heidelberg to Box Hill section of the SRL first.
* Extending the 48 tram to Doncaster and giving it dedicated lanes for more of its journey.
And then for freight, there’s a bunch of things too:
* Converting more suburban lines to dual gauge.
* Converting more regional Victorian lines to standard gauge
* Electrifying regional rail and freight services
* Building more multimodal facilities near existing rail lines.
@ajsadauskas @AllNewTypeFace Yeah but cars though. Cars!
Gotta build that freeway that will finally solve all the traffic problems caused by the last freeway we built.
We’re literally building a MASSIVE expansion to our rail system right now
