Needless destruction

“Auditor hits $2b road project”, The Age, 2/6. The controversial Frankston bypass road project (see 24/10/2010 entry) was condemned by the state Auditor-General as unnecessary.

The promised economic benefits of the multibillion-dollar freeway may have been overstated and its potential negative impacts ignored, according to a report by the state Auditor-General, Des Pearson. In a landmark finding, the report criticises Victorian road authorities for failing to take account of “induced demand” - the idea that bigger and better roads encourage more traffic - when deciding whether to build new freeways. […]

Environment group the Pines Protectors fought to stop the road. Spokeswoman Gillian Collins said she was shocked by the frankness of the audit report. She said it showed the Linking Melbourne Authority had misled people about the need for the road and the cost of the public sector building it.

So the Pines Flora and Fauna Reserve was destroyed no thanks to an uncaring Government that can’t see beyond its myopic focus on economic growth.

Letters in response, 3/6:

State planners in parallel universe

The Auditor-General has officially confirmed what sustainable-transport advocates have long known: Victoria lags decades behind the rest of the world when assessing transport projects (“Auditor hits $2b road project”, The Age, 2/6).

In the UK, the “induced demand” from new roads was officially recognised in 1994. Since then, all motorway proposals have had to take into account the new traffic they create.

Yet in Victoria, planners still promote the benefits of new roads by reference to travel-time savings that only come about if no one takes advantage of the road to drive more often, or to drive further. Most transport economists and planners outside Australia recognise that the only effective measure to cut congestion is to improve alternatives to car travel, including first-rate public transport.

But in the parallel universe inhabited by our transport planners, it’s better to destroy irreplaceable heritage bushland for a road and flood the southern peninsula with cars than do anything about the woeful 75-minute weekend frequency on the only bus service to the region.

– Tony Morton, Public Transport Users Association, Melbourne

Need independent advice

The Auditor-General’s conclusion that building more roads creates more traffic congestion is exactly what a 1994 UK royal commission found. That both Labor and Liberal state governments have ignored world’s best practice and have allowed VicRoads to continually dictate road policy is a disgrace. A new independent roads authority that complements the proposed independent public transport authority should now replace VicRoads without delay.

– Nick Roberts, Shepparton

Grim vindication of fight

FOR the many local residents and others who fought against this road, the Auditor-General’s findings are grim vindication of our stand. About 60 per cent of the peninsula is dedicated to green wedge areas. When the Brumby government committed to this outsized expenditure, it could only find a trivial $1 million to upgrade the mediocre bus services on the peninsula and in Frankston.

The revelation by a senior transport authority source that the government was looking for a “shovel-ready” project as an economic stimulus measure is particularly damning. The Commonwealth refused matching funding and the project was quite unsuited for pump-priming purposes. It started too late and it is far too capital-intensive to be a worthwhile employer of labour.

– Ian Hundley, North Balwyn

Protection is worthless

For years community groups have been voices in the wilderness predicting “potential negative impacts” in the form of extraordinary damage to the environment, in particular to the heritage property Westerfield – a sanctuary for endangered species of native vegetation and wildlife. These massive roadworks also go through the heart of the UNESCO Westernport Bay and Mornington Peninsula biosphere reserve, supposed to have been protected under state government guarantees for future generations.

– Julianne Bell, Protectors of Public Lands Victoria, Parkville

One-way traffic

The Committee for Melbourne says it’s time that “we, the general community” engage in the debate on planning our future city (Comment, 31/5).

Multitudes of citizens have been trying to do just that over the years: protesting about our precious parkland being handed over to a private hotel behind the Royal Children’s Hospital or to private developers in Flemington; taking on VCAT over the demolition of heritage buildings for the sake of ugly, uninhabitable and energy-guzzling rabbit boxes; writing letter after letter about the loss of farmland to urban sprawl, or about the state of public transport.

I assure the committee that ordinary people are interested in planning issues.

But maybe it only wants us to engage when we support its vision?

– Pamela Lloyd, West Brunswick

“Baillieu reviews green wedges”, 24/6. Those voters who might have hoped the new Liberal State Government might have been more receptive to planning concerns would be very disappointed. The Liberals are continuing the destruction of the open spaces that help make Melbourne livable, here targeting the “green wedges”, areas of land set aside decades ago to provide some space and environmental buffers. Why do planners back then seem so much wiser than the sorry excuses for ones making decisions now? Premier Baillieu is a former architect and has ties to the real estate industry.

Letters in response, 27/6:

Turn back the tide before it engulfs us

The government will consider expanding development in Melbourne’s green wedge zones, ostensibly as an overhaul of planning (“Baillieu reviews green wedges”, The Age, 24/6). It’s really just about clearing more urban land for developments.

We are facing a slow and consuming tsunami spreading over our land, destroying biodiversity, increasing pollution, and now it threatens to eat away at our city’s “green” lungs.

“Planning” is a euphemism for growth. It has become the lazy and easy way to accumulate funds, from rates and taxes and political donations. The plan will offer no solutions to our housing affordability problem, or the supposed housing shortage. A lack of a population policy doesn’t help.

Our city’s growth will force more people to accept higher-density living. It means more stress for families from being confined indoors, and potentially more mental and physical health problems. It will add to our carbon emissions, and further increase our living costs. Green wedges were meant for trees, waterways, recreation, habitat, biodiversity and fresh air. Structures in green wedges will clog up our city’s respiratory system.

Melburnians might accept change, but Melbourne’s liveability is not improving.

– Jenny Warfe, Dromana

Disaster is ever looming

I was shocked to read that the Premier is trying to make green wedges available to the property developers. He has a cornucopian view that we have unlimited resources for perpetual growth.

Our resources are definitely limited. It only needs one essential resource to become insufficient to lead to disaster.

– Malcolm Spittle, Dromana

Think more radically

While there are probably some places where the boundaries of Melbourne’s green wedges could be revised, analysis of probable population growth suggests a far more radical approach.

Even if the Melbourne region’s long-term annual population growth is a slow 1.3 per cent, there will be 8 million people hereabouts before 2065. Among scenarios worth considering is a multi-nodal Port Phillip metropolitan region with a railway circuit from the deepwater port at Hastings through Dandenong, Ringwood, Epping, Tullamarine, Laverton and Geelong, completed with a bridge or tunnel across the Heads.

A regional authority is urgently needed, with responsibility for integrating land use and transportation planning and a charter giving equal weight to sustainable development and environmental conservation.

– John Bayly, Glen Iris

An error of maths

The Board of Works set aside 2670 square kilometres for green wedges in its 1971 plan for Melbourne. The tenfold increase in their area that Ted Baillieu says has occurred (Editorial, 25/6) would mean that they now occupy 26,700 square kilometres. This is unlikely as the total metropolitan planning area is only 7673 square kilometres.

It seems the government has as much trouble with maths as it does with the concept of “green” in “green wedges”.

– Chris Curtis, Hurstbridge

One “solution” often touted to Melbourne’s excessive growth woes is to send all the surplus people to regional areas. But this is no real solution; transport and amenities are often inadequate in those areas. And not everyone there is enthused about the idea, as this snappy letter suggests:

Don’t make plans to send that extra million people that Melbourne can’t handle to regional areas. Solve your own problem, don’t just export it to us.

– Graham Parton, Stanley

The city that I have lived in all my life is being progressively ruined by greedy developers in cohort with uncaring governments. I can’t express enough my loathing for property developers in particular, who are razing the pleasant older houses and gardens in my suburb and many others. I would love to see them rounded up and shot or burned at the stake. They are opportunistic subhumans who should be exterminated like the vermin they are. An article from April about the uprising in Egypt describes developers as “justified targets” because they were part of the corruption and cronyism of the now-ousted regime. I would use that phrase for the ones here as well.