Melbourne's East West Link: A Missed Opportunity

The aim of this paper is to review the abandoned "East West link road project" in Melbourne, Australia. Increased population growth, increasing life expectations and rates of family formation combine to place significant pressure on Melbourne’s infrastructure. In addition, the shift from rural to urban living -especially in Melbourne, exacerbates such impacts. Such demands expose the limitations of existing Melbourne transportation networks. As a consequence on-going transportation infrastructure planning is constantly required for greater Melbourne and its authorities, along with some alignment at the national level. Subsequently Melbourne transportation infrastructure planning needs to carefully adopt a long-term approach. While the processes of land acquisition, design and delivery of transportation infrastructure cannot be achieved in the short term, long-standing strategies need to be cautiously established. For Melbourne in particular, the financing of such long-term assets is problematic and thus possess uncertain conditions, especially when dealing with transportation forecasting and future modeling. Going back to mid-1990s such forward transportation planning was essential to ensure a high-level livability for Melbournians. As Melbourne continues to expand both in population and geographically it was to cope with such demand that the East West Link project was proposed. This project was seen as crucial, not only to uphold the livability status, but also to sustain and prolong Melbourne's ageing road transportation infrastructure. However, soon after their election win in late 2014, the Victorian labor government scrapped this project. In doing so, certain transportation outlook was unfortunately neglected. This paper investigates some of the key missed opportunities of the East West Link project.