East West Tunnel Mess

[ARTZ]

really, you didnt look too hard then.. cause the 17bil plus figure has been thrown around alot.. As Aaron said, 8bil was just the first stage Hoddle st to citylink...to get a similar return form tolls as citylink would require a 30$ toll just for this section...

first link i clicked on

http://www.smh.com.au/business/if-you-thought-using-a-toll-road-was-costly-try-building-one-20140811-102i5o.html

(Its the age so take its credibility with a grain of salt )

anyway its beyond the point... 8-10 billion is jsut as ridiculous when a normal road would cost a tenth of that..this is an excercise in vanity at the expense of every other Victorian that doesnt give a rats ass about how pretty Melbourne city is...eastlink cost 1B, citylink costs 1.8B...can you imagine the traffic flow if we built 10 more eastlink type motorways...sure you might have to drive around the city not through it, but thats alot of nice driving roads going everywhere vs one shitty smoke filled tunnel going nowhere....

Think about it, we can build high speed Autobahns all around the city for this type of money..

Edited April 16, 2015 by ARTZ

[ARTZ]

Can you enlighten us as to how the $18B would be better spent? Just for shits and giggles?

see above, high speed autobahns surrounding the city vs small crappy tunnel going under it...

[Leroy Peterson]

sydney tunnels are terrible. no point in mentioning sydney in this thread ever again.

[alr33x]

Still 'estimates' from some guy..

"Direct comparisons are fraught as some projects are still in the planning stage, others were completed some time ago and the more costly projects have high tunnelling costs"

nice disclaimer to kick off his analysis may as well have said this is an opinion piece with little to no proof of the cost estimate

[Cowboy1600]

It's going to happen sooner or later labor has just wasted the money they need a road solution more trains doesn't mean squat for a majority of the population. I have stepped foot on public transport In decade and no amount of money or convenience could entice me back to it

I call bullshit on it's inevitability. And even if it is, it's still not a good investment at this point in time. Spend the money on projects which will give a better return. Once it works it's way to the top of the pile from a CBA perspective then build it.

Regarding public transport, just because you don't use it doesn't mean it's no good. There are loooots of people who rely on public transport and lots who would, if it were more accessible. A rail line out to Mernda would take thousands of cars off the road daily in the north east and even the Eastern. My brother in law is fairly typical of people out that way. He works for Telstra and has almost no option but to drive. The car parks at any station within cooee are full by 6:30am so he drives to work in the city. If he was within walking distance, or an acceptable push bike trip to a station he would catch the train. There are lots and lots of people like him on those outer suburbs.

[Cowboy1600]

For what it's worth it was labor who back flipped on the last lot of road tolling after promising not too.. Spose they'd figure half a billion for nothin is cheap compared to a billion dollar desal plant that's never been turned on

And the day it is turned on we'll all be very glad it's there. The desal plant is an insurance policy. We'll go through another drought within the next decade and by then we'll be housing another 1-1.5 million people in Melbourne. The pressure on water storage will be just too much. More dams is a stupid idea because at the end of the day they still require rain. We can't rely on rainfall any more for long term water security.

[ARTZ]

And the day it is turned on we'll all be very glad it's there. The desal plant is an insurance policy. We'll go through another drought within the next decade and by then we'll be housing another 1-1.5 million people in Melbourne. The pressure on water storage will be just too much. More dams is a stupid idea because at the end of the day they still require rain. We can't rely on rainfall any more for long term water security.

Its funny how quickly people forget how close this city was coming to having no water supply...

May as well turn it on now and start pumping water out to arrid parts of australia that need it...better farming, more revenue from produce, pays for desal...win win

It was a useful project, Having it sitting there doing nothing is the waste of money....

Edited April 16, 2015 by ARTZ

[Cowboy1600]

Still 'estimates' from some guy..

"Direct comparisons are fraught as some projects are still in the planning stage, others were completed some time ago and the more costly projects have high tunnelling costs"

nice disclaimer to kick off his analysis may as well have said this is an opinion piece with little to no proof of the cost estimate

Yeah, just some guy.

The libs refused to release basically any info regarding the cost of the EWL so "some guy" had to use the figures at his disposal.

Again, this was stage one. Stage two, from Citylink to the Ring Road, would be an even bigger and more expensive project, so $10B for that stage is probably quite conservative.

[Cowboy1600]

May as well turn it on now and start pumping water out to arrid parts of australia that need it...better farming, more revenue from produce, pays for desal...win win

It was a useful project, Having it sitting there doing nothing is the waste of money....

I'd be all for a couple billion dollars of the money saved by scrapping the EWL be used to pipe water out to rural areas that could use it to irrigate for farming.

It's not a waste of money, it's an insurance policy. Well, it's not a waste in so far as insurance is not a waste. Personally I hate insurance, paying the premium each year sucks balls, but if you ever need it you sure are glad you have it.

[Leroy Peterson]

the cost to run the desal in power and chemicals alone will mean the desal will never be payed off.

[Kinkstaah]

But it was never really designed to 'pay itself off'

it was designed to stop us running out of water to live with

This costs money, just like insurance costs money

[scotty nm35]

But it was never really designed to 'pay itself off'

it was designed to stop us running out of water to live with

This costs money, just like insurance costs money

Meh. I prefered the simple pipe under bass straight idea, run from Tassie's overflowing dams it would flow continuously, without power, for hundreds of years. Unfortunately the government knew they couldn't jack the price of water up as much with this solution.

[Cowboy1600]

Meh. I prefered the simple pipe under bass straight idea, run from Tassie's overflowing dams it would flow continuously, without power, for hundreds of years. Unfortunately the government knew they couldn't jack the price of water up as much with this solution.

What happens when you end up with a government in Tassie who doesn't like the government in Victoria? What happens when climate change reduces the abundance of Tassie water to the point they can no longer supply mainland Australia? How much would the pipeline have cost to build and then maintain?

Desal is the best insurance policy for water security. Regarding the power required, the ALP legislated to fund enough wind to power it plus some therefore negating it's CO2 output. The libs quashed this.

[alr33x]

Spose you were out by 8 billion ?

[Leroy Peterson]

What happens when you end up with a government in Tassie who doesn't like the government in Victoria? What happens when climate change reduces the abundance of Tassie water to the point they can no longer supply mainland Australia? How much would the pipeline have cost to build and then maintain?

err i got nothing 'gainst you cowboy... but umm there is already something called Bass Link.

Underwater DC cable that tassie supplies to victoria (for a profit during peak loading) due to their abundance of hydro generators. and unfortunately a lot of the time these sorts of decisions arent made by government, just allowed by them, because there are private companies that generally plan and research these sorts of ideas. and make sure theyre profitable and generally keep most people happy.

...unlike the desal.

[dezz]

Spose you were out by 8 billion ?

ImageUploadedBySAU Community1429266683.353974.jpg

But it's ok for your boys to be out by a lazy $3.9 billion?

[alr33x]

Well it's literally half as bad..

[ARTZ]

Are you still on That bandwagon Alex.

Dont care if its 8 or 18 or 10.7 , its not justified..

How about spend a billion building a road and a billion relocating everything in its path... There I just saved Victoria 8 billion dollars...give or take...

Tunnels are shit...

Edited April 17, 2015 by ARTZ

[Count Grantleyish]

Tunnels are shit...

Is it cos JZ sounds shit in the tunnel?

[ARTZ]

Dont know, I've never driven it.