The Mandurah line was eons ago in terms of the history of infrastructure costs in Australia. There’s also immense variability across projects, so you can’t reasonably extrapolate from one. All of these issues have been discussed before at length (e.g. see here and here). There’s a useful discussion of the circumstances of the Mandurah line in the comments section of this article. I’d suggest people who trot out ridiculously out-dated figures like Mandurah aren’t in touch with reality.

Raising the road over is about getting cars through without sufficient regard to the consequences. It is not an acceptable solution in urban areas.

Dunno Dudley about the Czech timely & half cost trams. They’re not like cars that you can just chuck on a road and drive. Bombardier have a manufacturing plant in Czech (was called Ceska) and also in a lot of other countries in the world and growing significantly in Asia. The new Melbourne trams are built overseas primarily, just put together, seats chucked in and painted in Oz.

That is a very ban idea. raising the road over the railway is the worst kind of grade separation as it creates pedestrian hostile environments around the bridge. It kills shopping strips (Warrigul Rd, Oakleigh being a prime example). In the case of High St, the tram should not terminate near Glen Iris it should go further, at least to Ashburton. Rail lowered under road is the best solution for level crossings followed by raising the railway and lowering the road, then raising the road.

“Trollrail”! That is indeed a wonderful term. I also like “Railbait”.

The way infrastructure costs in Melbourne have been escalating, four years ago is an eternity. The Government has allocated $350 million for three level crossing eliminations. Whether that turns out to be the actual cost is another question.

All the interface design is done by Crikey management. I wish they’d make a few other improvement too e.g. nested comment threads; a darker shade of green on hyperlinks.