With Bill Shorten possibly only months away from becoming Xavier’s first PM I would have thought the Kew line is an absolute no brainer. Federal funding will come rolling in to support the state plan.
The ideal arrangement would be to lower the rail at Buckley, Park, and Puckle/Holmes at the same time. This would also involve restoring the Mt Alexander Road boulevard to ground level with rail under that too.
That means you don’t lose pedestrian and cycling access, you don’t complicate access to the three schools immediately south of Buckley Street (which is chaos already), you don’t lose fifty-odd parking spaces around the station and shopping strip, your busiest station on the Broadmeadows line is DDA compliant, the Mt Alexander Road intersection isn’t subject to more delays because the new service lane needs its own phase. And so on.
Yes, this option is more expensive (but nowhere near the ONE BILLION DOLLARS figure farcically tossed around to dismiss it) but is an actual improvement to the broader area and all users (not just for motorised vehicles at this one crossing) for the next hundred years.
Fair enough. Never heard the billion $ argument, for me, it was more about preserving the Essendon Station and spending as little time as possible doing it.
Which was also driven (no pun) in large part by the sheer size of the continent, a relatively high rural economic and social base and imo a national psyche (at personal level ) of stubborn independence.