A toll road that Premier Daniel Andrews says will help fix Melbourne's transport woes will draw tens of thousands of passengers off trains and into cars, his own top advisers say.
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The $10 billion North East Link will create "an estimated reduction in train boardings of 25,000 on an average weekday", according to Infrastructure Victoria. That is the equivalent of shifting about one in 25 train journeys across Melbourne from rail to road.
The government argues the road will cut congestion. But a report has found it will "compete directly with sections of the metropolitan rail network, principally the Hurstbridge, Mernda, Upfield and Craigieburn" railway lines, leading commuters to opt for cars.
The government on its proposed North East Link
"The project would contribute to a small increase in car trips and reduction in public transport trips across the network. Because of the location of the project, it competes most directly with sections of the metropolitan rail network, principally the Hurstbridge, Mernda, Upfield and Craigieburn corridors. This is reflected in an estimated reduction in train boardings of 25,000 on an average weekday. ... The Metropolitan Ring Road, EastLink and the Eastern Freeway are all expected to experience increased demand."SOURCE: Infrastructure Victoria 2016
The finding is contained in a report produced for the government by consultants KPMG, Arup and Jacobs.
The Andrews government has pledged to start construction on the toll road in 2019 – a decade after Labor last said it would build it. When last proposed by Labor, its route was through Heidelberg's pristine Banyule Flats.
"We objected to EastLink because we knew it would increase pressure on this," said John D'Aloia, of the Warringal Conservation Society, standing on the shores of the biologically significant Banyule Swamp.
The green group was established in 1970 and fought off the Bolte government's F18 freeway, an earlier incarnation of the North East Link. It would have gone through what was then paddocks for cows.
Today, the Banyule Flats Reserve includes spectacular wetlands, replete with 153 bird species.
"This would be devastating. You're not going to resolve congestion by building a freeway through a significant conservation area like this," said Dennis O'Connell, president of the Friends of Banyule. The group opposes the freeway.
The Heidelberg-Bulleen route was chosen in 2008 by then roads minister, now Treasurer, Tim Pallas.
Mr Andrews has promised to study alternative routes before construction begins, while Roads Minister Luke Donnellan has argued that advanced tunnelling techniques will minimise any impacts on the environment.
Public transport advocates say the KPMG report makes it obvious the proposed toll road is "a congestion factory that takes Melbourne in the wrong direction".
"It's remarkable that anyone working in the public interest would be so positive about a project they find will put more traffic on the road at the expense of public transport," said Public Transport Users Association president Tony Morton.
All proposed routes for the road would involve significant tunnelling to protect sensitive green spaces, following the lead of EastLink's twin 1.6-kilometre tunnels to protect Ringwood's Mullum Mullum Creek.
Mr Andrews said last week the North East Link had been "put in the too hard basket" for decades. There is likely to be a voter backlash on each possible route, and both Banyule and Nillumbik councils are already signalling their opposition to it coming through their areas.
"The focus should be to complete the ring road, not a northern freeway into the city," said Banyule mayor Tom Melican.
Cr Melican questioned whether the road, which will join the Metropolitan Ring Road and the Eastern Freeway, should be built at all. "It will join two congested freeways together – and we expect it to solve a problem?" he said.
Nillumbik covers suburbs including Eltham and Warrandyte, another possible route. Mayor Peter Clarke said the environmental effects on Nillumbik could be extreme. The council's preferred route is through Bulleen and Heidelberg.
"The business case needs to give appropriate weight to the values placed on the green wedge and the unique landscapes we have," he said. "But we want the traffic problems solved."
When selecting that route in 2008, VicRoads hired engineers GHD to review three options – with the third going from Wantirna. The RACV, which wants either the Bulleen or Ringwood routes built, said the third option was highly unlikely.
The pressure to build the North East Link is the direct result of the freeways built since Henry Bolte released his government's 1969 Melbourne Transportation Study, proposing a sprawling freeway network.
Construction of the Eastern Freeway from the 1970s and the Metropolitan Ring Road from the 1980s has seen much of that network built in stages.
The pressure to build either the now-dumped East West Link project or the North East Link was made inevitable by the opening of EastLink in 2008.
This was predicted by the Federal Court in 2003, in late transport academic and lawyer Paul Mees' unsuccessful bid to stop VicRoads and then transport minister Peter Batchelor building EastLink.
Judge Peter Gray ruled in the case that a logical consequence of building EastLink was massive and immediate pressure to build another freeway through Bulleen and Heidelberg, "because of the obvious gap and the obvious inadequacy of a ring road that is incomplete".
The government made public its decision to build the freeway just three days after Infrastructure Victoria tabled its final report in Parliament.
The chair of Infrastructure Victoria is Jim Miller, who was with "the millionaires factory", Macquarie Bank, for two decades, until last year.
Macquarie was one of the biggest beneficiaries of the EastLink toll road deal, earning at least $60 million from the deal.
Mr Miller also, according to Infrastructure Partnerships Australia, "cut his teeth on the path-finding CityLink project, which remains one of the most innovative and successful public-private partnerships in Australia".
