Sample submission content

I would like to register my opposition to the Construction of the proposed East-West Road Tunnel.

I have just read through the Economic Benefits and Costs Analysis from Meyrick and Associates (posted on the Department of transport website).

This does not make sense financially.

Page 34 of the report puts the benefit/cost ratio for the combined road and rail project at 0.7 and if you subtract the "rail only" figures, this gives a BCR for the tunnel of 0.45.

That is a ridiculous return on investment. If the government is going to spend billions of dollars of Victorian tax-payers money, then I can't imagine a worse business case than the one Eddington's report has proposed.

I am [insert your job role if appropriate] and if someone in my office proposed a business case that had a BCR of 0.45 they would be laughed out of the room.

I understand that the government sometimes needs invest money in something that appears to have poor return on investment economically if there were large social or environmental benefits. However, I can not see any potential benefit worth the 3.9 billion dollars that will be lost by this project.

I do not believe that this tunnel will, in any way, reduce the congestion at the city end of the Eastern Freeway as the vast majority of that traffic is headed for the city, not the western suburbs.

On top of this the environmental implications of building this tunnel are diametrically opposed to the Victorian Government’s emissions reduction goals that they have published.

I am a Labor voter and have been for some years. If this plan is approved by the state government I will not, in good conscience, be able to vote for Labor in this state ever again. In fact I will be compelled to actively campaign against any government that is so short-sighted as to suggest this tunnel.