Is there actually a sensible case for the East-West Link?

A good question –  Alan Davies analyses the Business Case (Executive Summary) for this proposal and asks ‘Is there actually a sensible case for the East-West Link?‘ The business case is as weak as ever.

Today July 29th, Alan Davies updated his initial analysis with an even more disturbing finding. The numbers don’t even add up (as in arithmetically)

http://blogs.crikey.com.au/theurbanist/2013/07/29/do-the-numbers-on-the-east-west-link-add-up/

Mr Davies found that to make the benefits outweigh the cost, the government used a cost of  $3.69 billion to build the tunnel, elsewhere in the document it’s reported that “the total cost of the project is $6-8 billion.

Even after hiding between $2.3 -4.3 billion  in costs, they still had to introduce other discredited techniques just to make the business case marginal.  Using “Wider economic benefits” is one method to arrive at their marginally positive number.  This is how the Grand Prix business case is justified – but that’s only lossing us $50m per year.

This mad tunnel would fund Melbourne’s losses on the Grand Prix for a hundred and sixty years.