This gripe is clearly Alan Davies's favourite. And one he bangs away at like a latter-day, tiny mind Luddite.

Turn the clock back a little over a century and substitute the proposed Sydney Habour Bridge.

One might even swear this commentary had been time travelled to the present, By a similar, narrow, small mind, simply incapable of seeing the big picture!? Or the financial realities.

Just highly suspicious, political evocations!?

Yes, Alan, this project when completed may well eat into the profit margins of profit gouging predatory monopolistic taxi companies?

But, usher in economic advantages, which like the enormously expensive, Sydney Habour Bridge, beyond any comparative expectations!?

Plus, channel some of the central city congestion away to the suburbs, which will be removed by fast efficient loop rail projects that link radial corridors!

Move employment and housing demands further out, along with the more affordable housing of less densely populated areas! A point you as usual, adroitly avoid.

One can always tell a Victorian, but you can't tell them very much!

If we allow idiots like you to persuade a fifty-year delay!? The costs will balloon exponentially by as much as 32 multiples.

Well done FINACIAL genius!
Alan B.

Public transport is a ridiculous waste of the majorities money, on the least deserving small percentage of the population. It only makes any kind of even perverted sense when used to carry a lot of workers to their place of work, i.e. to a city centre.

As it always has to be subsidised to get anyone to use it, this is even worse. Why the hell should the lower paid workers in the suburbs have to subsidise the travel highly paid city workers.

Projects like this do nothing but give huge contracts to construction companies, & even higher pay to the construction workers. They do nothing good for the tax payer who funds them.

Then we get the even worse idea, "a metropolitan-wide 'grid' of multiple radial and orbital lines that maximises the number of travellers who can access high-frequency public transport by foot. A mammoth sum like $50 billion could fund a 'spider's web' of fast light rail and BRT routes every 2 km (say) with dedicated rights-of-way and priority at intersections".

We must never allow this overloading of the roads motorists have funded many times over by a costly inefficient public transport system.

Real planners would be organising the work places out to where the workers live, rather than trying to steel our roads for such undeserving projects.

Alan B.,
You're wrong. Alan Davies writes about all sorts of urban and transport issues in his Crikey blog. It's just that this issue is what has been selected to be republished here recently.

The project certainly won't eat into the profits of predatory monopolistic taxi companies. User's already done that!

This loop is in no way akin to the Sydney Harbour Bridge. That enabled people to get where they wanted to go without having to get on and off ferries; this will make some suburban journeys faster, but won't provide a one seat ride for many users.

The Harbour Bridged reduced (boat) congestion on Sydney Harbour. The roads paralleling Melbourne's suburban rail loop are relatively uncongested at the moment, and that's likely to remain the case in the near future.

Those who know about transport know that the suburban rail loop may be a good long term investment, but there are plenty of other rail projects that deserve higher priority. Meanwhile a lot of the SRL's benefits can be achieved by using express buses.

Once upon a time, Aidan, many, if not most, people in Melbourne worked in the CBD. Then commercial and office accommodation became so expensive that it made sense to relocate offices to suburban centres.

So the old transport system didn't actually work efficiently any more.

One of the consequences was that fewer - a lot fewer - people bought newspapers to read on the train and the The Sun News-Pictorial went bust and was merged with The Herald. The Sun News-Pic was at that time the biggest selling newspaper in Australia, if my memory is correct.

Agree that buses might be more efficient now. But you'd need a lot of them and roads would be heavily congested as a consequence. Wins and losses.

Can't claim to know enough about Melbourne's SRL proposal, though it seems to me you'd need a helluva lot of SRLs to do the job properly.

If buses were completely Autonomous and electrically powered via exclusive use graphene busways, may compete with rail? Sydney Harbour Bridge wasn't designed to reduce boat congestion in Sydney Harbour! And a risible and completely without foundation or merit, that underlines Adian's sheer paucity of credible argument, which is his usual par for course, own your own facts, debating custom!

A then visionary infrastructure project was conceived to among other things allow very heavy traffic including fully laden freight and passenger trains to cross the divide, local ferry services struggled to perform!

The subsequent economic benefits have vastly outweighed any conceivable expectations or forecasts.

Rail is far and away the safest mos to effective means of moving bulk freight or commuting passenger traffic and with the loop, designed to move people from the hugely compressed centre, out to where the future employment growth is sanely heading.

And with the lowest possible carbon footprint!

Similarities to the Sydney Harbour Bridge include. Both forward-thinking infrastructure projects cried down by a ponderous plethora of vested interest protest. Visionary and forward thinking.

The saddest days was when, vastly more economical, rail line services were simply abandoned in favour of big haulage companies, their profits and subsequently clogged highways! That have cost squillions more to upgrade, than what simply upgrading already existing rail services would have!

Putting more carbon-emitting traffic onto already congested roads, would simply exacerbate the problem and hardly an alternative solution!
Alan B.

One of the worst things that ever happened to Sydney was the building of the Harbour Bridge, without the Bridge there would be little through traffic in Sydney; the Harbour Tunnel was another bad decision.

Getting rid of the trams was the worst.