Transport and trucks are emerging as a key inner-west battleground ahead of next year’s state election.
The Labor opposition last week released an $18 billion transport alternative to the government’s east-west link, but the government has attacked the plan as an unfunded “thought bubble”.
Labor would sell off the Port of Melbourne to help pay for projects such as the $400-500 million West Gate Distributor, a toll road from the West Gate Freeway to the Port of Melbourne, which it says would take thousands of trucks off residential Footscray and Yarraville streets.
Western suburbs Liberal MP Andrew Elsbury slammed the proposal, arguing a toll on the road would guarantee trucks continued to rat-run through local suburbs.
“We will be building a second river crossing, and the government has committed to the east-west link stages 1 and 2,” he said.
“Blind Freddy can see all [Labor’s] plan will do is consign Melbourne to years of chaos on our roads and rail.”
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Mr Elsbury said trucks would use a tolled tunnel because it offered a more useful shortcut than ramps onto the already crowded West Gate Freeway, which carries 170,000 vehicles, including 24,000 trucks, per day. But federal Gellibrand MP Tim Watts said the east-west link would do nothing to alleviate growing traffic numbers.
He called on Prime Minister Tony Abbott to shift his $1.5 billion funding pledge to the link to the Melbourne Metro Rail Tunnel, which last week was confirmed as a greater priority by Infrastructure Australia national co-ordinator Michael Deegan.
Footscray MP Marsha Thomson said that, unlike the government’s unfunded second stage of the east-west link, the distributor project would be delivered in Labor’s first term. She said the commitment to build Melbourne Metro Rail would also ease congestion on the Werribee and Sunbury lines and provide access to Parkville for the first time.
Western suburbs Greens MP Colleen Hartland supports the West Gate Distributor but has called for measures to force trucks to use the bypass. “I see the only way to achieve this is to ban [Melbourne] port trucks on residential streets in the inner-west. The two initiatives must go hand in hand.”
