Day 4: SLOW PROGRESS ON THE ROAD TO FACTS

By Andrew Herington

Debate crawled along today like traffic in the Burnley tunnel. Mr Pelosi was grilled for the whole morning, but there was no illumination as to why he had supported everything in the CIS.  He assured us that he could find nothing in the 1,030 submissions he read that convinced him of fault in the CIS.

Pelosi did retract his support for the view that a fourth lane on Citylink South would mean it would operate “well within its capacity”.

Chris Wren QC continued to bore into the claims that traffic in Alexandra Pde would be significantly reduced; that north-south traffic and tram routes would benefit and the contradictory evidence about whether Hoddle St traffic would increase or decrease.

In the afternoon Mr Tom Brock’s evidence on road design was refreshingly more informative and critical of the various options he had reviewed for the LMA at the request of the Assessment committee. However he did find fault with most of the options proposed for the interchanges at Hoddle St, Elliot Avenue, Citylink and Ormond Rd.

Two hours of cross-examination threw more light on the technical options all of which had shortcomings. Chris Wren QC secured a commitment for Mr Brock to come back with some alternatives, but after being challenged the issue was referred to the Committee to rule on tomorrow.

Mr Brock agreed there were no road design impediments to considering options such as the two proposed by Safety Net for Royal Park. The Committee seem to be keeping their options open about how they may interpret the terms of reference.

Outside in the real world, the Napthine Government committed to the long promised next order for trains and a $2 billion upgrade to the Dandenong line. This includes high capacity signalling but only four of the nine grade separations required.

Sadly, it didn’t include an announcement that the funding would come from scrapping the East West Link.