As the new Metro Tunnel in Melbourne approaches completion, the inefficiencies of the existing City Loop have began to get more attention, with a project called the ‘City Loop Reconfiguration’ involving two short tunnel connections flagged as a way to fix them. So why is the City Loop inefficient to start with, and how can […]
Just on a decade ago at the corner of Swanston and La Trobe Street in Melbourne, I found a curious plaque hidden among the bluestone paving – it read “Queen Elizabeth Plaza named by Her Majesty The Queen, 28 May 1980”. So what was Queen Elizabeth Plaza, and why did the Queen have it named […]
The other week fellow transport Philip Mallis raised an interesting question – would the average Melbournian know what a ‘City Circle’ train is, if they were told to catch one? Philip Mallis photo The back story The City Loop encircles the Melbourne CBD, with train services from different lines taking different routes around it at […]
One might think that finding out how much Melbourne’s City Loop cost to build would be a simple task, but with so much conflicting information out there, it was much harder than I expected. So where did I have to look?
With the 2013 Victorian and Federal budgets having been released in the past week, the spotlight is on funding major infrastructure projects across Australia. So how does the government pay for the big infrastructure projects we need to avoid choking on our own growth? And how did we do it in the old days?
