When I visited New Zealand in the glorious, pre-COVID days of 2019, I was somewhat sceptical of Aucklanders who warned me about the traffic. Then I spent an hour crawling just a couple of kilometres along the Southwestern Motorway. But, if I thought Auckland traffic was bad, nothing prepared me for Melbourne.
Having allowed myself what I thought was plenty of time to get to the Spirit of Tasmania morning sailing, imagine my distress to be stuck in what had all the appearances of a four-lane car-park, when the CBD’s skyscrapers were barely even in sight. “Ah,” Victorian friends later assured me, “that’s because of the West Gate Tunnel construction”.
Two years later and the completion date for the traffic-stopping project is blowing out even further.
Tolling giant Transurban has admitted the West Gate Tunnel’s 2023 completion date will no longer be achieved due to difficulties disposing of the project’s three million tonnes of contaminated soil.
The toll road was originally set to finish in 2022, but Transurban told investors last year the project would be finished in 2023 due to the soil crisis.
As is standard for a deliver-nothing Labor government, spin comes first and foremost.
Posters along work sites on the West Gate Freeway promising a 2022 completion date were removed.
But the kicker is that a government apparently imagined that they could dig a series of tunnels under Melbourne’s inner west, a century-long disease and industrial dumping-ground on the outskirts of the city, and not have to deal with mega-tonnes of contaminated soil. This was, after all, the site of the infamous Coode Island fire, which sent massive clouds of toxic smoke spewing over the city 30 years ago.
Which, come to think of it, might explain why so many of them vote for Daniel Andrews.
It comes as the Andrews government is being sued by a group of residents in Melbourne’s west and Melton council in Melbourne’s west over plans to dump soil contaminated with potentially carcinogenic PFAS chemicals from the West Gate Tunnel in landfills located close to homes.
You know a project is literally toxic when even the building consortiums are frantically trying to wriggle out of it.
Builders John Holland and CPB Contractors are in a separate legal dispute with Transurban over the builders’ attempts to quit the project.
As always, when it comes to Labor projects, it’s spin first, boots on the ground a distant last.
Transurban said on Thursday that “significant progress” had been made on two of the three major sections of the project, despite tunnelling not yet starting.
Sydney Morning Herald
So, they’ve made significant progress on the tunnel project despite not actually starting any tunnelling.
Tell me this isn’t a Labor government project.
These clowns make Kiwibuild look like a roaring success.
Please share this article so that others can discover The BFD