Day 4 – Public Hearings – East West Link (Eastern Section) Project Assessment Committee: Thursday 6th March 2014

 

This post includes:

  1. Day 4: East West Link blog updates
  2. Storify: Mainstream media and live-tweeting from Day 4 of EWL Public Hearing

Thursday 6 March After hours update

This blog is the work of many wonderful community members taking detailed notes at the hearings – followed by careful editing and verification before posting.Thanks for reading the blog and taking an interest in the scrutiny of the biggest infrastructure project proposed by the Victorian and federal governments.For the second day in a row the committee ran out of time.

Mr Wyatt’s evidence on urban design has been held over to Day 5 and Ms Nesbitt’s on social impacts to Day 8. With three other witnesses already listed for Day 5 are we rapidly heading to witness-gridlock? The Act gives no leeway for extended time restricting the hearing to 30 days.

Day 4: Slow progress on the road to facts by Andrew Herington

Debate crawled along today like traffic in the Burnley tunnel. Mr Pelosi was grilled for the whole morning, but there was no illumination as to why he had supported everything in the CIS. He assured us that he could find nothing in the 1,030 submissions he read that convinced him of fault in the CIS.

Pelosi did retract his support for the view that a fourth lane on Citylink South would mean it would operate “well within its capacity”. Chris Wren QC continued to bore into the claims that traffic in Alexandra Pde would be significantly reduced; that north-south traffic and tram routes would benefit and the contradictory evidence about whether Hoddle St traffic would increase or decrease.