The Age: $4m Hoddle Street plan shelved – 21 March 2011

The Age: $4m Hoddle Street plan shelved – 21 March 2011

A report into how to fix Hoddle Street’s traffic problems, commissioned by the Brumby government at a cost to taxpayers of almost $4 million, will be shelved.

The Baillieu government will this year begin planning work on a railway line to Doncaster, first promised by conservative Premier Henry Bolte in 1969.

Premier Ted Baillieu has promised the railway line will be built along the Eastern Freeway’s median strip, with an expected impact on the amount of traffic along the connecting Hoddle Street.

As a result, a $3.7 million Hoddle Street study by engineers URS Australia, commissioned last February by the former government, will now not make any recommendations.

VicRoads’ director of the Hoddle Street study project, Agnelo Duarte, said the study team had “developed a number of preliminary broad solutions”.

But recommendations for major infrastructure works, originally promised by the former government to come out of the study, will now not be made. Continue Reading…