UN 120: Highlights from the Suburban Rail Loop East hearings

Want information and commentary about current transport planning and projects? You’ll get a flavour from media releases, newspaper articles and TV news items but rarely the detail. Especially post-COVID where there has been a transfer of interest and resources from transport to health. The Age, to take one example, has not replaced specialist Transport Reporter Timna Jacks who now covers health. The departure of Nine's Andrew Lund was another big loss. 

Not having this journalistic capability means a greater reliance on government media releases and less ability to spend time on issues beyond the usual news-making train disruptions, project blow-outs,  annual fare hikes or the odd corruption scandal. Today's hollowed out media can rarely find the time to scrutinise below-surface activities affecting transport including parliamentary committee deliberations, IBAC, Ombudsman  and auditor-general findings, longer term planning work, detailed reports, municipal meetings, internal union politics and critiques from independent experts. 

We do hear from transport academics via the media but generally only for short grabs or (at best) opinion pieces. Unfortunately their longer publications are not always readily accessible online to the general reader. And none of today's seem to quite have the punch-through and acerbic wit of the late Paul Mees.  

Within the bureaucracy information is tightly controlled, especially on matters considered to be politically sensitive. Modern management puts as much distance as possible between those who know stuff and those who say stuff. Those who know can’t tell while those whose job it is to tell don’t know. Private consultants have a little more latitude but may have a barrow to push or still be within the orbit of those who do or could engage them. Retired ex-transport folk are freer still but are no longer as close to the action.

Detail can make a project succeed or fail. Yet internal local transport expertise is not necessarily well rewarded with career progression at the very senior levels. Instead much upper management is transferred from another field or arm of government, may have party political backgrounds or be overseas imports (mainly from the UK). Our Department of Transport may be able to manage a contract or franchise but doesn't always have the vision, design and influencing skills to weave projects into a connected network or even interest the government in the most beneficial and cost-effective upgrades possible.

Published departmental annual reports are high level (ie low detail) only. Some light is shone by reports from government related bodies such as Infrastructure Victoria and the Auditor General and other such as the Grattan Institute. Much of this material though comes out well after the 'horse has bolted'. And their lessons are not necessarily learned in the clamour to jump on board the next big project.

SRL East submissions and hearings

One exception to all this, that is where the general public can get lots of detail early on, is via Environmental Effects Statements and other planning processes associated with major projects. These often include a process for submissions (which for the Suburban Rail Loop East you can read here) and hearings. 

Anyone can lodge a submission and nearly 400 people and organisations did. Submitters include those affected by or otherwise having an interest in the project. They range from private individuals to resident action groups, to local councils and major institutions along the project's route. There are also submissions from planning and engineering professionals who may suggest alternatives or improvements.  

Then there's hearings. Those making submissions can advise whether they wish to appear at a hearing. They may appear either personally or via representatives who may be experts in their field. 

These people are worth listening to. The information that comes out during this process can be gold to the interested observer. There can be way more detail than you'll ever find in the media. 

Hence today’s item. It hasn’t much made the news but for the past two weeks the Suburban Rail Loop East Inquiry and Advisory Committee has been having hearings.  The hearings will continue Monday - Thursday for eight more weeks with a break for Easter. 

 You can follow the hearings online via Zoom (details here). Documents submitted by those appearing are here. Multi-hour audio recordings, arranged by day, are here. The latter are actually delivered via YouTube but they are unlisted so you won't find them just by going to the SRLE IAC Recordings channel. But once you have the link you can share with YouTube's 'start at' function allowing you to highlight a particular speaker or point.

Good luck though - finding a specific person or topic is like finding a needle in a haystack. Professional YouTubers overcome this by having section in their video or at least a simple list of topics/people by time put in the video description or a pinned comment. Unfortunately not even the latter was done despite the tiny amount of work that would be required. 

Consequently following all this is pretty much a full-time job. You can however find some updates on the SRL Community Discussion Facebook page from people who are closely following the project (largely due to concerns over train stabling at Heatherton). 

Interesting points raised (especially on transport aspects)

Here are some interesting points from some of the documents submitted by those appearing. I've included the document number so you can look everything up here. Also if a document piques your interest it could be worth going over the audio recordings where they're speaking. 

1 - 229: Pre-hearing tabled documents. Include much material to do with the organisation of the hearings, who will be giving evidence etc. There is an attempt to group speakers by areas of expertise. Documents 52 - 56 are VISSIM transport modelling reports on various station precincts. There are many expert witness statements and opening submissions from stakeholders such as councils and major destinations. I recommend reading these opening submissions for an overview of commonly raised concerns. Also important is item 201 which is the SRLA's summary of themes raised in the public submissions. 200, from the Suburban Rail Loop Authority, explains the project's rationale (to move to a less radial public transport network) and broad alignment options considered.  

230: Expert evidence statement from John Kiriakidis & Robert Dus. Reviewed all 364 public submissions. They found that environmental project requirements for impacts around the project's construction were vague and should have targets, standards, and limits rather than use words like 'minimise impact of'. 

237: Michael Barlow from Urbis gave a land use and planning assessment. This is big picture stuff. The SRL would aid Melbourne's move towards a polycentric city (something that roads currently cater for but not fast public transport). This assessment is very supportive of the SRL but proposed clarity regarding public space and noise mitigation. 

274 - 279: Multi-part position paper and maps from Monash University. Monash previously expressed significant concerns about aspects of the project. One of the papers contained within 274 is the PTV 'Network Technical Standard' for railways in Melbourne. 

290, 291, 293: The cities of Whitehorse, Kingston as well as Monash University engaged Bruce Johnson from Arup to give expert transport planning evidence.

290 (for Whitehorse) includes a handy 3 page summary from page 9. Recommendations include a longer horizon year, clarity on land uses surrounding the stations, bus planning to be done and (importantly) paid linkages for interchanging passengers that are integrated with the SRL project (and not considered separately). A more rigorous approach to measuring interchange performance, gender impact assessments (for safety and security) and greater accommodation for 'kiss and ride' car drop-offs is proposed.  291 for Kingston has a similar summary. 

A useful thing about this evidence is that it quotes the DoT's Movement and Place Technical Guidelines (below). These define a Level of Service for intermodal interchanges. For example A grade (the best) requires less than 30 seconds walk time with excellent shade and shelter. In contrast E grade is poor with over 3 minutes walk time and no shelter. 

Many of the passenger interchange movements in the proposed SRL design would rate at worse than 'very poor' as I discussed here and confirmed in Johnson's work. Considering such linkages 'at a later stage' is cited as further indication of the low priority the project gives to efficient passenger interchange.   

The same evidence was critical of active transport aspects. 3.10.1 says: "In line with my comments provided in Section 3.5, it appears from the design solutions presented that a low level of consideration has been given to the need to provide for infrastructure beyond the immediate boundaries of the station realm. This is a key consideration towards achieving an integrated transport solution and applies to pedestrian and cycling infrastructure in the wider station precinct." 

A high use of active transport is needed to offset the low provision of car parking. However the former can only happen if adequate active transport provision is made in plans for the precinct and surrounding area. Similar comments apply with regard to connectivity from other public transport as mentioned above. 

Integration with the surrounding precinct was a concern with the following statement made. 

I recommend reading and listening to this evidence (dated 5 - 7 March 2022) if you're interested in interchange, active transport and surrounding precinct planning aspects of the SRL East. Detailed comments by station are also given. 

294: Expert evidence from Jason Walsh for the City of Monash. Another expert opinion dealing with the three stations in the City of Monash. The closure of Coleman Pde is a local issue opposed by this opinion. The evidence also recommends lowering of the existing Metro station and a fare paid connection between SRL trains and buses. 

314: Meg Caffin's presentation emphasised the importance of tree canopy cover. Alarmingly greater Melbourne has lost 5% of it just between 2014 and 2018. Includes data on what SRL project needs to do to offset losses during construction. This has a transport impact due to the relationship between tree cover, cycling and walking attractiveness. 

For further points see my Twitter thread here.

Even with the above I've only covered a tiny percentage of what was raised. In particular there was significant attention to tunnelling, earthworks, noise and construction impacts I haven't discussed. There are no doubt other important points. Have you found some interesting snippets not mentioned here? If so please mention them in the comments below. 

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