The inability of successive NSW and Australian governments to construct a second Sydney airport is taking on the proportions of a national tragedy. The failure to expand Sydney’s aviation capacity isn’t because of technical, environmental or financial difficulties – it’s solely due to political selfishness and opportunism. The new study by the Federal and NSW [...]
By Alan Davies
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Also posted in HSR High Speed Rail
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Tagged Airport Link, Anthony Albanese, aviation, Badgerys Creek, Barry O'Farrell, Canberra, High Speed Rail, HSR, Kingsford Smith Airport, rail, Wilton
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February 28, 2012 – 7:00 pm
The CEO of Melbourne Airport, Chris Woodruff, has a gripe. The Victorian Government is pressing ahead with construction of a $250 million rail line to support his competitor – Avalon Airport – but is spending a mere $6.5 million to study the warrant for rail to Melbourne Airport. Yet as I noted once before, while [...]
By Alan Davies
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Tagged airport, Airport Link, Airtrain, Avalon, CBD, Chris Woodruff, Infrastructure, Melbourne Metro, rail, Skybus, train, tunnel
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February 8, 2012 – 8:35 pm
To cut straight to the chase, the ‘correct’ answer is $15 billion. Or at least that’s the widely accepted estimate. It’s cited in this 2010 story quoting the Chairman of Infrastructure Partnerships Australia, Mark Birrell; in this 2011 interview with former Deputy PM and rail enthusiast, Tim Fischer; and more recently in this submission by the [...]
December 14, 2011 – 7:04 pm
Yesterday’s post on the unreliability of predictions fits nicely with the latest round of calls for a rail line to the airport. The stimulus this time is a report in The Age last week on Melbourne Airport’s plans to upgrade freeway access and build a new terminal. It set off a predictable and familiar landslide [...]
August 23, 2011 – 9:12 pm
The new draft report by the Productivity Commission on Economic Regulation of Airport Services has sparked outrage among readers of The Age for its finding that parking fees at Tullamarine are “not a ripoff”. Last time I looked there were 110 comments on The Age Online, virtually every one of them dripping with vitriol. Whether [...]
August 15, 2011 – 5:02 pm
The Baillieu Government is determined to press on with its election commitment to start construction of the $250 million rail link to Avalon Airport in its first term. The Premier did this nice photo op last week waving-in planes at Avalon. The Age reporter, Andrew Heasley, took a clever line, asking how the Government could [...]
By Alan Davies
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Tagged Avalon Airport, aviation, China, Gordon Rich-Phillips, High Speed Rail, investment, Lindsay Fox, Melbourne airport, rail, Robert Doyle, Ted Baillieu
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In her famous book, The march of folly: from Troy to Vietnam, multiple Pulitzer Prize winning author Barbara Tuchman describes how governments sometimes persist, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, with policies that are against their own interests. Ted Baillieu’s folly might be his Government’s unconditional election commitment to build a rail line to Avalon [...]
One of the great mysteries of 2010 is why the then Opposition promised to spend taxpayers funds to provide a rail service from the CBD to Avalon Airport. This wasn’t a promise to conduct a study, as was the case with the Doncaster, Rowville and Melbourne Airport rail lines, but a firm commitment to take [...]
The idea of a high-speed Melbourne Airport-to-CBD rail line is in the news yet again, this time advocated by the RACV. You’ve got to give the Royal Automobile Club of Victoria its due. While simultaneously calling for roadworks to reduce congestion and improvements to traffic flow in Hoddle Street, it’s morphing into a general transport lobby [...]
The key transport challenge at Melbourne Airport isn’t to build a rail line to the CBD. Rather, it’s how to move growing numbers of travellers from dispersed suburban locations to the airport and back again. Here’s a (speculative) idea about how that might be done. This is a pressing issue because passenger movements through the [...]
