Tuesday 25 March

4pm update

An individual submitter from Hilton St, Kevin Roughana (510), made his presentation after lunch.

His will be the last house next to the temporary road.  He does not object to the project, he thinks most motorists consider that this will ease congestion, but he has concerns about the design.

He asks why there should be access to the tunnel at Hoddle St?  The closure of Wellington st will create more congestion, he says.

He argues there must be another option to demolishing buildings on north side of Alexandra Pde at enormous cost to the community.  He asks the panel to find a way to complete this project without demolishing people’s homes.

2:15pm

Neville Goddard is next on noise: ha is an acoustic and noise engineer.

There are differences between the NSW and VIC policies on noise from roads.   In Victoria, levels are three dB higher and there is no night level.

On the Eastern freeway, there are 5dbs difference between day and night.  With window open: 53 dbs or 43 with window closed.

Wren asks about the noise from the elevated road structures: flyover at eastern end – what noise would occur under such a structure? Noise levels can reduce as you approach at ground level (which is where measurements are taken).  A four metre noise barrier is the recommended mitigation treatment.

At the western end, three times the existing traffic would cause an increase of five dB.  A 50% increase would be 1.5 to 2 dBs- but he’d really need a calculator….he says.

Counsel for the City of Melbourne, Pitt, asks about Manningham St. Table 34 identifies measured background noise levels.

What is the impact on amenity?  What about an outdoor BBQ? Tolerable but not too pleasant. Same for wetlands passive recreation? Tolerable here too.

Legal arguments in other cases have included sleep time levels but he hasn’t included these here

Pitt: SEPP-N1 puts responsibility for compliance back on business producing the noise: in this case, the agent of change is the LMA.

Lunch update

In cross-examining Zeibots, Wren showed data from tunnels in Sydney and Brisbane which show Zenith model by Veitch Lister performed better in relation to actual traffic volumes than the winning bid projections.  Eg: Cross-city tunnel actual 32,500; winning bid projection 90,000 (+275%), Zenith projection 30,000 (-10%)

Morris for LMA suggested that Zeibot’s report recycles her PhD thesis. She refuted this saying much of her report draws on academic research and also her witness report on Frankston Bypass.  He draws attention to some quotes from her PhD in her report.

Then it was back to complicated charts and tables. Morris argued that induced demand table shows that cost of trips will be lower so existing and new road users will benefit. Therefore induced traffic is not a bad outcome.

Zeibots said generally road users will see benefits, but not all at all times.

Next up: Neil Goddard (acoustics) followed by Bryce Raworth (heritage) but he’s not here yet.

Expect to finish early tomorrow.  Hearing tomorrow starts at 11am.

Morris said there are three bidders short listed and they have been asked to submit their proposals having regard to the amended performance requirements circulated 20 Feb.

Bidders’ contracts make it clear they will need to comply with finalised performance requirements and approval conditions set by the Minister. Following the Ministers’ decision for the EWL, the short-listed bidders will be provided with a copy of the Minister’s decision, the finalised performance requirements, applicable approvals and approval conditions attached to each approval.

Bidders will be given opportunity to consider the information and advise LMA whether and, if so, what impact the Minister’s approval decision will have in their bid proposals. Morris says it is possible that three bidders might be reduced to two.

Lunch break.

Morning update

Preliminary matters this morning:

The EPA are calling Cook on the morning of Friday 28 March.  The EPA will continue with their submission in the afternoon and on Monday 31 March.

You may recall this article published in The Age 7 March:

Pelosi wrote to The Age the following day refuting the report:

This morning, Andrew Herington asked for a transcript of the cross-examination with respect to the level of service being ‘D’ in the tunnel.  No transcripts are available – although recordings are available on request.

The notes we have from the session during which Mr Wren cross-examined Pelosi say:

“GHD Level D for road design lanes. Mr Veitch, AM peak congestion with Level D. Therefore 20km/h. Not often used i.e. speed. More so look at through-put than speed. Forecasting in the future, comfortable of understanding that we have traffic capacity needed.”

After listening to the recordings, we will post further information about this.

 

Michelle Zeibots for Yarra discussed traffic and traffic forecasts in detail.  She commented on having difficulty ascertaining traffic growth in the year after opening and successive years because of a lack of data in CIS.

There is a predicted ‘ramp up’ period when traffic volumes increase dramatically in response to a new travel option – induced traffic.  Lots of international studies were referred to and lots of technical terms to absorb: ‘elasticity’ of demand values and definition of micro economic analysis ….

Crux is: has the issue of induced traffic been adequately addressed?  Veitch had been given forecasts for the year of opening, but had not included them in the CIS.

Veitch claims in CIS that there would be an additional 6000 trips per day with EWL – Zeibots thinks there will be more: 74% of Melbournians use cars, only 26% PT.

There are three pieces of info required: the number of lanes and merging lanes, travel demand analysis: volume to capacity ratios, and the cost benefit analysis.

She studied Veitch’s report: 6000 additional trips on any work day and 800 extra in am peak – this is the only evidence that induced traffic growth has been included in the model.  She argues EWL would induce more additional trips than 6000. Congestion however, would suppress numbers.

She disagrees with Veitch statement that these figs are insignificant,  these induced demand increases will make a difference- making a network more dependent on driving a car.