By CAM LUCADOU-WELLS
CRITICS are pondering the value of a $2 billion-plus upgrade of the overcrowded Dandenong rail corridor – funded under a public-private partnership and which will be detached from the City Loop.
The State Government announced in its 2014-’15 budget last week the project would finish in five years.
According to its budget papers, the State Government has allocated just $56 million over four years towards the project, estimated to increase the corridor’s capacity by 30 per cent at a cost of $2-2.5 billion.
Reports suggest the project’s real cost may be bloated to more than $5 billion to the private consortium, which includes Metro Trains.
The repayments are reportedly up to $1 million a day for the next 20 years.
Another reported aspect of the PPP is developers being handed land at grade separation sites.
Opposition Public Transport spokeswoman Jill Hennessy said the government appeared to have “ditched proper planning process in a desperate bid for votes”.
“There are reports that Denis Napthine is planning to spend billions of taxpayer dollars under a veil of secrecy and with no regard for the integrity of the process.”
Public Transport Users Association president Dr Tony Morton said the project had “substantial value” for the Dandenong corridor despite its delay and his concerns about the PPP agreement.
“The return on public investment would be even greater if it were taken on as a public project with conventional debt financing to reduce the ultimate bill to the taxpayer.
“It basically hands over planning responsibility to the private sector, with the public interest a subsidiary consideration.
“This means the planning may not adequately consider elements like good bus interchanges at stations, that serve the public interest but do not assure a financial return to the project proponents.
“The rail corridor’s trains are Melbourne’s most congested.
In a PTV passenger load report, 12 peak services a day were overcrowded beyond benchmark levels.
About 25 per cent of peak-time passengers were caught on these overcrowded services.
Professor Graham Currie of Monash University’s Institute of Transport Studies said congestion would get worse until the upgrade was finished in 2019.
He said Metro Trains’ PPP in Hong Kong had worked well but it was unclear what the “real detail” of the Victorian PPP could be.
“Metro Trains (in Hong Kong) makes money because it develops the property around the station.
“A key question is whether the community here is happy to give this land away to developers.”
Critics have also focused on the impact of the government’s Melbourne Rail Link proposal.
Under the plan, the Dandenong corridor’s commuters would miss the City Loop and be offloaded at Southern Cross station on the furthest side of the CBD.
Dandenong ALP state candidate Gabrielle Williams said: “If you live in or around Dandenong and you want to get to Parliament, Melbourne Central or Flagstaff, you will always have to change trains at Richmond to catch a City Loop service.
“This will add to commute times and congestion.”
Sitting Dandenong MP John Pandazopoulos told Parliament last Thursday: “We are going to spend all of this money not to make it easier on everyone but to make it harder on the people who use that rail corridor.”
The government has announced it is entering “exclusive negotiations” with the private consortium, hoping to finalise an agreement by late this year subject to “a positive value for money outcome”.
The project includes 25 new trains, high-capacity signalling and the removal of at least four level crossings.
The State Government did not respond to the Journal’s questions before deadline.
