SRL and the Tsar's Finger

The three phases of the Suburban Rail Loop (via MTIA)

Recent coverage of the secretive origins of the Suburban Rail Loop has highlighted the failures of process that have led to the plans we see today, and has led some people to question whether it's even worth proceeding with the project. So should the project go ahead, and if so, what needs to be improved? 

A bold vision

To let the cat out of the bag straight away: I think the Suburban Rail Loop is, fundamentally, a very good idea. One of the reasons Melbourne is so car-dependent is that our heavy rail network is so radial - it stretches out from the CBD in relatively straight lines out to the suburbs, with minimal capacity for cross-suburban travel. Our tram network is slightly less radial, but still emphasises the same commuting pattern, and rarely extends far from the CBD. Our bus routes do, to some extent, provide that cross-suburb connectivity where the rail network doesn't reach; currently their frequencies are so sparse, and the speeds so low, that they're not an attractive or viable option for many people, and clearly there's a huge need to improve them. 

But building at least one orbital heavy rail line, that has the speed and capacity to quickly shift a lot of people from one radial line to another without going into the city, is a really bold vision for how to tackle this problem, and can also be a really valuable part of the mix. It may be exponentially more expensive than a rapid bus line - but it also shapes the city exponentially more than any single bus line could. To my mind, we should be talking about improving buses AND building SRL, not picking one over the other. 

But the details really do matter. Precisely where this heavy rail line should go, where the stations should be built, and when it should be built, are questions we should be having a detailed, open, public conversation about. In fact, as the Age article highlighted, what it's even for is a question we need to collectively resolve. Is it a transport project? Is it a precinct project? Is it some combination of the two, and to what degree? 

Andrews initially made it seem like a long-term project we could all shape (via Facebook)

When the project was first announced, it seemed like we might get to have that conversation. The election commitment was only $300m for planning with no funds for construction, and Dan Andrews said "I won't be the premier when this project is finished, but if re-elected I will be the premier who gets this project started". The promotional video was also pretty vague, talking about "potential" stations at various locations. 

All of which implied this was just a newly-hatched idea, an extremely long-term project, and they'd be open to discussion before details were locked in, before starting really early works towards the end of 2022. As opposed to what seems to happen quite a lot under the Andrews government, which is that they commit to something, and when people raise any concerns about it, just say "We're getting it done" and charge on. Regardless of whether the project is fundamentally a bad idea that should be stopped, like North East Link, or a good idea that just needs some tweaks, like many LXRA-built stations. 

As I said, the fundamental idea of SRL was good, but some of the details seemed a little bit off. To my mind the project should be pretty much equal parts transport project and precinct project, and the time horizon should be a long one - for one thing it's probably a bit early to start building it, as there are higher priorities, but also the land use questions should take a long view about what the sites could be in a few decades, not just what they look like today. 

The SRL Clayton station box is on the wrong side of Clayton Rd (via SRLA)

It was completely understandable that the initial vague video wouldn't pinpoint a station in the ~8km between Cheltenham and Clayton, but it's totally unacceptable that today's detailed plans don't include one. Connecting to the Glen Waverley line was clearly a good idea, though diverting all the way to the terminus was an odd choice when Mount Waverley was another candidate on a more direct path - having now read the rationale in the business case, this seems to be an example of them focusing too much on current land use patterns and not considering what future land use could look like with the enormous planning powers they're granting themselves over station areas. 

And while the stations at Clayton, Monash and Deakin were clearly good ideas, the specific sites they've subsequently chosen are pretty suboptimal. Questions have been raised over whether people will be able to interchange within the paid area; the government has repeated their commitment that people will be able to interchange within the paid area, but even assuming they can, Clayton's SRL site is like 150m from its existing station escalators - a long walk through an underground tunnel is an inferior option to a station built directly beneath the existing one, regardless of whether you stay within the paid area or not. 

The Tsar's Finger

The whole SRL saga reminds me of the (apocryphal) tale of the Tsar's Finger. The legend goes that when the route for the St Petersburg-Moscow railway was being planned, Tsar Nicholas I took a ruler and drew a straight line between the two, but because his finger was over the edge of the ruler, the line on the map had a slight bump about a third of the way along; too scared to question the Tsar's ruling (lol) the engineers proceeded to build a dead-straight line with a slight deviation where the Tsar's finger had been. (The truth is, the original line was straight, and the deviation was built 26 years later in order to ease a steep hill). 

The deviation known as the Tsar's Finger (via Big Think)

With the SRL, the vague ideas put forward at the 2018 election unfortunately didn't turn out to be the starting point of a conversation, they reified into an election commitment. We aren't led by a Tsar or dictator, despite what the Herald Sun would have you think - but the government's culture of steamrolling ahead and "getting things done" at all costs has meant that sensible deviations from published plans don't happen as often as they should. 

This on its own would be bad enough, but you also have to factor in the fact that the government's ambitious infrastructure plans (and COVID) have massively stretched the budget. This means the public servants have had to find savings wherever they can - and since they still need to be seen as delivering on what the politicians have promised, they have to save money on the bits that were just implied, or ambiguous. So Heatherton loses part of its green wedge for a stabling yard, and doesn't even get a station in return. And the new stations at Clayton, Monash and Deakin will be sited where it's cheap and easy to build, not where it's best for accessibility or interchange. 

They're not terrible locations, I'll grant you - but if it's worth spending tens of billions on this thing, it's worth making sure they're the perfect locations. If we cheap out on this stuff today, we'll be living with the consequences for decades. And it's not like there's no precedent for this - as Daniel Bowen has pointed out, the Melbourne Metro 1 tunnel project has very well-located stations. Building these stations where they are hasn't exactly been cheap, but because the project was well-planned and well-understood a long way in advance, there seems to have been more understanding of where the best locations are, and why it's worth getting those details right. 

Long-term planning

Part of the beauty of a big bold vision like the SRL is that, even if the first stage feels a bit rushed, it does hopefully give us time to have the necessary conversations about the later stages. For starters, the government's whole "Airport Rail and Western Rail Project are part of SRL" thing is clearly just political spin to get maximum buy-in from all around the city in the short term. If and when SRL connects the northern suburbs to the Airport, it'll be several decades from now - the whole landscape of the west could have changed by then, and certainly none of today's decision-makers will still be in power by then. There's still plenty of time to decide the path it'll take through the west. 

Scribbled potential routes for SRL West

But the initial vision for Stage 2, from Box Hill to the Airport - hopefully happening a bit sooner - has fundamentally the same inadequacies as Stage 1. In my view, there needs to be at least one station between Doncaster and Heidelberg. There probably needs to be one between Heidelberg and Bundoora. Fawkner, being surrounded by cemetery, is the wrong Upfield line connection - Gowrie would be a better choice, although a brand new interchange station at Campbellfield could be better still. And of course, the question of precisely where each station goes - eg should the Bundoora station be in the middle of La Trobe, or closer to Plenty Rd for tram interchange? - is crucially important for the stations that have been announced. If we want the government to make the right decisions here, we have to start having those conversations right now - before they lock themselves into the wrong decisions. 

But the big-picture issue in all this is that we need to stop infrastructure being used as a political football, and commit to clear, transparent, evidence-based planning. The Auditor General has, quite rightly, slammed the government for failing to produce an integrated transport plan as required by the Transport Integration Act, instead producing 40 disintegrated plans (not all of which are even public). And it seems clear why the government is so reticent to do this - infrastructure wins votes, and they want to be able to pull rabbits out of the hat whenever an election rolls around. (As, obviously, do the state Opposition, and both parties at a federal level.) A robust public plan would hopefully mean that bad ideas like the West Gate Tunnel or "congestion-busting" car parks wouldn't pass muster, and presumably their fear is that even good ideas wouldn't get as many headlines if they were in the plan (and therefore not a surprise). 

But playing political games with billion-dollar transport infrastructure ultimately leads to worse outcomes for all of us. We need the government to work with the people of Victoria on a transport plan that will allow us all to get where we need to go - quickly, safely, sustainably, accessibly, equitably - and we need it now.