No real choice

The Freeway Option Review effectively silences those voices in the community who are opposed to the freeway extension proceeding in any form. Concerned residents have been manipulated into believing that a “No Build” option can no longer be expressed.  Support for Option 3 (potentially the least environmentally damaging) will be artificially high because it will include support from those who believe that a submission which rejects all four options outright will be discarded, and are therefore forced to choose what they perceive to be the least of four evils.

KMFA deplores this manipulation of the democratic process which silences dissent.

There is still a pervading opinion in the community, frequently expressed to KMFA, that “you’ll never stop that”. In Opposition the ALP urged Victorians to become “participants not spectators”. The lack of transparency and genuine public consultation on this issue has left many feeling as powerless as before.

Project planned in secret

Justification for building the extension is based on VicRoads’ secret Review of the Eastern Freeway: Springvale Road to Ringwood, an internal document dated March 1995. This report was kept from public view for more than three years before it was forced into the public domain through an FOI request by KMFA. The review, which VicRoads claims “confirmed” the need for the extension, did not, in its own words “involve any consultation with the community, but referred to previous processes and documented attitudes”.

The community has the right to know how VicRoads have “confirmed” this need when the two most comprehensive investigations on the public record, summarised in the Gibson and Russell reports, both concluded that the project should not proceed.

Why does the road lobby get all the say?

The situation still prevails in Victoria whereby governments on all levels turn almost exclusively to the road lobby for “expert” solutions to transport problems. Unfortunately the road lobby knows only one solution — build more roads. Even when it becomes apparent that their most recent “solution” has only created more problems, they continue to be rewarded for failure.

The PPK study commissioned by Maroondah City Council1 illustrates the narrowness and covertness of current thinking. Planning is based on and analyses determined by this type of study. Reports such as these are seen by only a handful of people, usually those who have commissioned the work and hence are likely to favour the conclusions reached.

Traffic modelling such as the TRIPS package is used in the PPK study, and is verified by figures taken over two years. However, the modelling has been developed over decades in which the paradigm for urban transport has not altered. Under these conditions the models are doomed to succeed!

To underline the intention that innovative transport and urban planning could not be tolerated, PPK assumed that “future mode split would remain the same as the current situation. The Traffic Assignment adopted the current VicRoads estimates” (IV, p. 39). There is no suggestion that innovative public transport/land use developments should be considered to change the relationship between public transport and private road use.2

The Government must distance itself from the road lobby if it is genuinely committed to ensuring that “transport planning takes into account all needs and impacts including social, environmental and economic to provide sustainable, long term solutions to our traffic problems”.3 As long as traffic problems are treated exclusively by road engineers and the road lobby, transport planning will remain heavily biased towards road building. If the Government is serious about transparency and meaningful public participation, it must indicate from whom it seeks advice, who influences the decision-making process, and whom it acknowledges—or dismisses—as having authority and expertise.

The myth of “solving the problem”: traffic volumes and travel times

VicRoads’ claim that building the Eastern Freeway extension would not generate additional traffic, but would only take the pressure off parallel roads—the Maroondah Highway and Doncaster Road—was ridiculed by their own figures just six months after the opening of the Koonung valley section.4 Before-and-after traffic counts carried out by VicRoads in July 1998 showed that two-way traffic volumes in the eastern corridor network had increased by about 30,000 vehicles per day.

 The traffic projections by VicRoads are clearly most unreliable. From their own figures the Koonung section of the freeway has currently reached around 2010 projections. KMFA would go further and contend that some of VicRoads’ own published figures are not even reliable. Counting of vehicle numbers undertaken by KMFA members earlier this year suggested figures even higher than those admitted by VicRoads.

Travel times (the ultimate justification for freeway building) have increased in peak periods, as illustrated in the RACV’s 1998 Travel Times survey. With the extension to Springvale Road, it now takes commuters four minutes longer to travel from Doncaster Road to Hoddle Street during the morning peak. Meanwhile, savings on travel time from Springvale Road to Hoddle Street are marginal, providing an improvement of only two minutes over the same journey before the extension opened.

Further, The RACV’s Peter Doupe told the Age that traffic problems were likely to increase if the freeway was extended to Ringwood.

 “In general improvements such as the extension of the eastern freeway and the opening of new sections along the ring road have meant that traffic simply gets to the bottlenecks quicker”, he said.

Yet incredibly, community support for the Mullum Mullum extension continues to be based on a belief—or wishful thinking—that it will somehow improve traffic flow and reduce travel times. The “four options” package exploits this persistent fantasy of endless, unrestricted travel on super-freeways. In doing so it denies people the opportunity to be involved in the decision making from a base of proper knowledge and understanding.

The hidden costs of the total plan

The true costing of the Eastern Freeway Extension to Ringwood is shrouded in secrecy. Uncertainty still exists over the real cost of the Koonung section. For example, were the sound walls, water retention and replanting projects included in the final publicised cost? Similar doubts surround the Mullum section. What will be costs of vent stack installation and maintenance, emergency exits, driver education? Equally undiscussed is the cost of the extra road building that will flow from the extension in both directions (see p. 7).

The cost estimates of the four options—$263, $321, $366 amd $302 million respectively —will no doubt influence  public choice. Yet these estimates are meaningless , and wilfully misleading, while so many questions surrounding the overall cost remain unanswered.

In summary

KMFA calls for an immediate moratorium on freeway building followed by an in-depth public debate on future land use and transport needs.

We call on the Government:

 to present all relevant facts to the public;
 to acknowledge the need for change;
 to lead the debate;
 to act in a way that reassures Victorians that they can be participants in the decision-making process;
 to act for sustainable long-term solutions, not short-term political gain.