Tara Murray
Liberal Northern Metropolitan MP Evan Mulholland is calling for the state government to go back to the drawing board to speed up completion of the duplication of Mickleham Road.
Plans have been announced for the duplication of the Mickleham Road at Greenvale from Somerton Road to Dellamere Boulevard.
But Mr Mulholland said locals are calling for the project to include the busy stretch from Dellamore Boulevard to Craigieburn Road to reduce travel times.
“The state government reckons it will cost taxpayers well over $200 million to duplicate a road by only 1.6 kilometres,” he said.
“But I’ve met with the Hume City Council on this and they tell me their engineers estimated they could have done the entire job for $145 million and gone further out to Mt Ridley Road.”
Mr Mulholland said he welcomed the $213 million worth of funding, but said more action was needed to be done to compete the whole duplication.
He raised the issue in the parliament last week, calling on the Transport and Infrastructure Minister Jacinta Allan to urgently investigate the issue.
“Stop taking the Mickey with Mickleham Road – and get the job done properly,” he said.
“I also revealed in parliament that the Victorian minister had now put the cost of the project at $222 million in a letter she sent to the council.
“That would represent a near $10 million cost blowout, with barely a shovel put in the ground.”
Hume councillor Jim Overend said the council has been trying to get answers from the government as to why this duplication is costing so much.
He said with thousands of new residents in Craigieburn West precinct structure plan site would be using the road that is already congested.
“If we were to go by the state government’s estimates, the total cost would be around $1.3 billion – who would give us that sort of money?” he said.
“The Victorian government needs to explain why the road can’t be duplicated further with the $213 million that has been provided.”
According to the government, the costings have taken into account a range of factors including land acquisition and the relocation and protection of utilities such as a jet fuel pipe that serves Melbourne Airport, as well as escalated costs of services, resources and materials being felt across the construction industry.
“All of our costings are based on the advice of hard working road engineers, who deliver upgrades to some of the biggest arterial roads in Melbourne,” a government spokesperson said.
