When the Tullamarine Freeway reaches capacity next decade, creeping congestion will eventually double your time sitting on the SkyBus to Melbourne Airport. As the city grows, driving from Parkville will become a 68-minute slog.
But a new rail link from the CBD via Sunshine in the west, if it gets built, will be just half an hour.
After five years at the negotiating table with the airport, first as transport infrastructure minister and now as premier, Jacinta Allan received a welcome text message from the chief executive Lorie Argus late last Sunday night. The private operators had capitulated on demands for an underground station, ending a stalemate that delayed the project at least four years.
Allan should have been thrilled.
Instead the premier maintained the rail line was years away.
While the main excuse not to proceed had evaporated, she insisted the timeline could not be fast-tracked from 2033 because of the airport’s years of “unreasonable demands” that they could not “wish away”. With a likely price tag of more than $13 billion – leaving a funding shortfall of at least $3 billion – it left open speculation that either Allan or Treasurer Tim Pallas were not so keen to build it while the east reaps the $35 billion first leg of the Suburban Rail Loop.
Jacinta Allan did not expect the airport to flip and place huge pressure on the government when they do not have a budget allocated to the project. Or do they?