Business operators facing eviction due to the Suburban Rail Loop (SRL) have been given more time to vacate their sites, leading experts to question the wider timeline and viability of the project.
Victoria’s Department of Transport and Planning last month wrote to business owners neighbouring a massive Suburban Rail Loop East site in Box Hill advising them of the changes.
In a letter sent last month and seen by the ABC, Qipo Skewer Bar on Whitehorse Road was informed it would be given an extra nine months beyond its expected eviction date.
“The Authority advised it proposed to take possession of the Land on 1 December 2024,” the department’s land acquisition director Bryan Yeow wrote to restaurant’s owners.
“I am pleased to advise that additional analysis has allowed us to confirm a further extension of the possession date of the Land to 1 September 2025.”
The new date came as a relief for the Qipo Skewer Bar owners, who are still hunting for a replacement premises.
“We’re trying very hard to find a new property but a lot of other businesses in the local area are just competing with each other,” co-owner Michael Yu said.
He’s optimistic his business could succeed at a new location, but said operating across the road from a major construction site was difficult.
“We even had homeless people living next door because there’s no one looking after the properties,” Mr Yu said of a vacant shop waiting for demolition.
“At night it’s very dark on the street, so some people may think we are already closed.”
The restaurateurs’ lawyer Chris Wiseman said he was aware of other businesses also being told they could stay put until September 2025.
“We believe some further work has been done by the authority to look at its programming,” Mr Wiseman, of law firm Mills Oakley, said.
One small delay can cause a ‘cascading effect’
Suburban Rail Loop East, the project’s first leg, is due to open in 2035 at a cost of at least $35 billion.
The Victorian government wants the Commonwealth to cover a third of SRL East’s cost, with another third coming from extra state revenue raising — referred to as “value capture”.
So far the federal government has committed just $2.2 billion to SRL East.
Infrastructure and transport expert Marion Terrill suggested the moving eviction time frame could indicate wider problems on the project.
“We may see that there’s a pause or a pushing out of the finish date,” Ms Terrill said.
“With these big projects, they’re very complex, and they have a lot of interdependencies, so if one thing gets delayed, then there’s a cascading effect.
“The bigger [the project] the riskier, and this is the biggest ever.”
Ms Terrill, who was a former Grattan Institute Transport and Cities Program director, said projects announced on the run ahead of the 2018 election, as SRL was, were more likely to encounter problems.
“The government should be transparent about what is going on,” she said.
Ms Terrill said Victorians had a right to have more information about the way billions of dollars of taxpayer money was being handled.
“If you’re a listed company, you’re required by law to report promptly to the market any change in your expected financial outcomes,” she said.
“This is just like that, it’s an investment that the taxpayers of Victoria are making, and so we also should know promptly if there’s any change in the costs, any change in the timing, any change in the expected benefits that we’ll get from this project when it comes to fruition.”
The rail loop in its entirety is due to be finished by 2050. What that will cost the state remains a mystery.
Victoria’s Parliamentary Budget Office has put the cost of building the first two stages of the loop — East and North — at $96.4 billion.
Ms Terrill said it would make sense if the project was paused, or even cancelled, given other projects had faced budget overruns.
“This project is ruinously expensive, and we still don’t have a viable way to pay for it,” she said.
“We’ve had a cost overrun of $2.5 billion on the metro tunnel, of $4 billion on the West Gate Tunnel, and of $16 billion on the North East Link, so it would be good to know if there’s a cost overrun so far on suburban rail route, and if so, how much.”
Despite the fact money had already been sunk into the project, it wasn’t too late to pull the plug, according to Ms Terrill, given its early stage.
“Even though we have spent some money this is not like a project that’s nearly finished,” Ms Terrill said.
“There’s an awful lot more billions of dollars to come down the pipe through to the 2050s or 2060s.
“In many ways, we are in a bit of a hole and when you’re in a hole, the best advice is to stop digging.”
Townhouses flattened to make way for SRL
The prospect of the project being put on ice is heartbreaking for Melbourne architect Carlo Corallo.
A property his family owned, which included a block his migrant parents bought in the 1970s, has already been taken over by the SRL in Burwood.
“It was a dream started by my parents,” Mr Corallo said.
“[They] saw it as an opportunity of putting together a retirement fund and for putting together something to leave their children.
“We thought it would be a nice thing for us to also continue that legacy.
“It was meant to be a retirement project for our family, for my sister’s family as well.”
The family, including Mr Corallo’s architect daughters, built 13 townhouses on the site and the plan was to rent them out.
“They haven’t had the heart to come and see it,” he said of his daughters.
The development was about three quarters finished when they received a surprise weekend phone call from their local member warning their property may face compulsory acquisition.
Following advice that it was an unlikely outcome, the family decided to finish the job.
But 18 months after the townhouses were completed, the government took possession and razed the new homes.
“There’s a lot of emotion attached to that,” Mr Corallo said.
“They’re knocked down and quite frankly negotiations with us aren’t complete, and they’re not even complete with our neighbours and they’ve knocked down our neighbours’ house too.
“We don’t understand for the life of us what the rush was knocking down these properties.”
He pointed out that during a housing crisis, it would be a travesty if homes were knocked down prematurely for a project which may or may not proceed.
For Mr Corallo, it would be crushing if the SRL didn’t get finished.
“Then everything that has been pulled down will be a waste and will serve nothing,” he said.
Eviction delays are at the request of businesses, SRL authority says
Shadow Transport Infrastructure Minister David Southwick said it was alarming there was no funding certainty for the biggest infrastructure project the state had ever undertaken.
“Because of the uncertainty of the finances the project either needs to be rephased or certainly at the very least pushed out,” Mr Southwick said.
“There’s no surprise that you’ve got people where their lives are being affected by this with that level of uncertainty because the government hasn’t done their homework.”
The ABC asked the government what was behind the delay in taking possession of the Whitehorse Road properties and if it represented broader project delays, as well as how SRL was avoiding the cost blowouts faced by other major projects.
A Suburban Rail Loop Authority spokesperson said the eviction delay was at the request of businesses.
“Suburban Rail Loop remains on time and on budget – the first tunnel boring machines have been ordered and we are on track to begin tunnelling in 2026,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
“Works are well underway across all six station sites and the train stabling facility in Heatherton.
“By the 2050s, Melbourne will be the same size of London today and SRL is a key part of how we will manage that growth and provide more housing options closer to jobs, services and great public transport.”
ABC News
