Virtually all infrastructure experts opposed the Victorian government’s Suburban Rail Loop (SRL) because the cost was prohibitively high, the project lacked a business case, failed any objective cost-benefit analysis, and would not generate enough customer demand.
For example, Victoria’s Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) conducted a cost-benefit analysis and discovered that the SRL East and North sections have a benefit-cost ratio (BCR) of only 0.6 to 0.7 over 50 years of operation, implying that the project returns only 60-70 cents for every dollar spent.
Despite these major problems, Premier Allan has signed multiple tunnelling contracts to build the SRL, lumbering Victorians with more debt and diverting scarce resources away from the state’s growth areas.
