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MELBOURNE and CITY LINK

Today's Answer to Tomorrow's Problem

The Old George Augustus Sala was right, it really was Marvellous 
Melbourne. In 1835 its European population was zero, fifty-six years  
later it was the 22nd largest city in the world. During this time 
Melbourne had become one of the most important Pacific Rim cities, 
the re-export centre of the South Pacific, Australia's financial 
capital, and by far the country's richest city.
A monument to its time and that time's technology it was the right 
city in the right place at the right time. The 'place' was that spot 
on the east coast of Australia where the ships sailing the 'great 
circle route' from the UK (Liverpool) had to call, and the 'time' was 
when sail was the only possible way to travel. ('The Tyranny of 
Distance', Blainey) So, it was that the port of Melbourne, not gold, 
made Melbourne marvellous, and it was because everyone and everything 
that travelled to and from eastern Australia had to pass through her 
portals. Like the 'buck', they stopped here. In 1897 (ibid) when 
steam took over from sail this became optional, and when air travel 
became the norm a visit to Melbourne dropped from an option to being 
unlikely.
All this relates to changes in our perceptions of time and space. In 
1854 the James Baines sailed from Liverpool to Melbourne in a record 
63 days (ibid), today we fly from Melbourne to the UK in about a 
third as many hours and the telephone, or fax, allow us to 
communicate with London in milliseconds, not hours, not days and 
certainly not weeks or months.

So it is that poor old Melbourne is no longer a power in the world. 
She's just another medium sized city that time has past by. The 
depredations of the motor car, urban sprawl, and a failing 
manufacturing base, have left our city trapped in its 19th century 
past.

As comedian Wendy Harmer (Good Weekend, 28/9/96) puts it, "Melbourne 
is one of the B-grade capitals of the world. A sad, anonymous 
collection of drab suburbs huddled around a deserted city centre in 
desperate search of a defining architectural moment".
Clearly something must be done.
The New Well, City Link will do something.
This $1.8 billion tollway will be built owned and operated for 38 
years by a private company, Transurban City Link Ltd (Herald Sun, 
5/6/96). It will connect Melbourne's major freeways and will have its 
anchor point near Crown Casino so that, as it feeds the casino, it 
will also make Melbourne a car based city.

The reality is that:
� Melburnians prefer driving their own cars to riding on public 
transport, and they will bear a considerable cost penalty to do so;
� City Link will increase car travel in, and around, the Central 
Business District (CBD);
� the CBD is sustained by the fixed rail public transport network 
(42% of trips);
� public transport's losses are inversely proportional to its usage;
� City Link will encourage fringe CBD commercial development around 
Southbank, Crown Casino and Docklands; and
� these new commercial developments will be at the expense of the 
CBD, and the fixed rail public transport network.
What I am suggesting is that if we lose the CBD then we also lose the 
fixed rail public transport system, and vice versa. I am also 
suggesting that City Link will destroy both the CBD and fixed rail 
public transport.
City Link or Public Transport In his 1992  paper, The Wasting of the 
CBD, John Hull, a partner in the real estate firm, Knight, Frank, 
Hooker, cites the effect on public transport of Coles Myer's move 
from the CBD to Tooronga. "The results were dramatic ... the priority 
mode of transport reduced from 60% for train, bus and tram to 10.6% 
whilst motor vehicle travel by private car increased from 10.4% to 
55.1%".
"If the drift [from the CBD] of 5,000 people lost the same percentage 
[of public transport users as Coles Myer employees] the cost would be 
about $40 million". But what if the CBD lost 36,000 (about 25% of the 
1992 CBD employment figure)? Using Mr Hull's figures we are looking 
at a cost to public transport of nearly $300 million.
It would appear that City Link would gain a very considerable 
commercial advantage if the fixed rail public transport network were 
to be downgraded or, better still, closed, and that there is a very 
simple way to achieve this end - entice a sizeable chunk of the CBD 
workforce into an adjoining area that's served by a freeway but not 
by rail. Somewhere like, for example, Southbank and Docklands.
'Transporting Melbourne' shows the fixed rail public transport 
network as having a 4% share of all trips, but the central region 
(i.e. the CBD plus the cities of Yarra and Port Phillip) generates 
18% of total trips, and 19% of these are by fixed rail. If a new 
commercial centre is developed on the southern fringe of the CBD, 
then most of those trips will still be attracted to the central 
region, but not to the CBD, and hence, will not travel by rail.
A New CBD There are City Link entry and exit points at Dynon Road, 
Footscray Road, and Kingsway. It appears likely that there will be an 
increase in the number of major developments and in commercial 
activity where freeway access is best, and land prices comparatively 
low, i.e. the whole sweep from Footscray to Port and South Melbourne 
to the edge of the CBD. Perhaps this is why Hudson Conway and others 
are buying up large tracts of land between Crown Casino and the docks.
John Cain proved once and for all that Melbourne is finite. Between 
1987 and 1992 (1992 CAD Floorspace & Employment Survey) 'cranes in 
the skyline' added 24.95% to the floorspace of the CBD. The result 
was a vacancy rate of 26.33%. It is hardly surprising that today, 
late 1996, CBD property values are at 1986 levels and commercial 
rents are still falling.
The Cost Over Melbourne's history a vast amount of money has been 
invested in infrastructure in the CBD.  John Hull (The Wasting of the 
CBD) estimates the 1992 replacement cost of this investment at $8 
billion and values the CBD's building stock at $20 billion.
Using these figures, we can assume that the cost of building a new 
commercial centre of comparable size to the CBD (Docklands is bigger 
than the CBD) would be about the same, i.e. $28 billion and the drop 
of value in the 'old city' would be at least half that figure, let's 
say $14 billion.
Therefore, to build and service a new city on the swamps between 
South Melbourne and Footscray may well cost something in the area of 
$40 billion.
To put this in perspective, the 'discovery' of a $40 to $50 billion 
'black hole' in the state's finances panicked the incoming Liberal 
government, many Victorians, and the international debt ratings 
agencies.
Of course, the rebuilding of what is already built, would create a 
lot of short term jobs. Unfortunately, it is hard to see how such 
conspicuous waste could create sustainable growth.
This, is the likely fate of a Melbourne that uses 19th and 20th 
century technology and infrastructure to fuel its economy. Such an 
economy, and society, depend on the movement of people and goods - 
usually by road. It is the city graphically described above by Wendy 
Harmer.
The New Millennium But, in four years we will have entered the 21st 
century. The dominant economic model of the new millennium will be 
one that is powered by information technology (IT). It will be a 
world which trades primarily in ideas, not physical goods.
'Development Framework for Victoria' (Dept. Planning and Development 
and ors., September 1994), under the heading 'Communications and 
information technology' (CIT), suggest that: "CIT also has 
implications for the form and structure of cities: the technology 
itself is in a dynamic state of development and change. Planners 
should be thinking about the changes to strategies and planning 
schemes that will be needed to accommodate developments such as 
working from home ('telecommuting') and shopping from home 
('teleshopping'), which could add to the attractions of rural 
settlements by making them less remote." 'Transporting Melbourne' 
says that:
� 40% of Melburnian's travel is to work or to shop (home to work 12%; 
other to work 5%; home to shop 12% other to shop 11%); and
� 86% of the distance travelled by Melburnians (both as passengers 
and drivers) is by car.
Though some trips would include both shopping and work some 'other' 
trips (36% and 17%) would be affected by IT (e.g. entertainment), so 
to suggest that 40% of all trips by car will be affected by IT is a 
conservative estimate.
Demographic trends predict that over the next 15 years Melbourne's 
population will:
� only increase by 13.9%;
� grow older; and
� become even more concerned about safety.
The conjunction of a small, 13.9%, increase in population; a decline 
in travel to work and shop (i.e. 40% of car based kilometres 
travelled, and 86% of all travel); a large group of elderly citizens, 
many of who are early Internet adopters, and who will be increasingly 
afraid to leave the home; suggests that there will almost certainly 
be a reduction in car based travel over this 15 year period, let 
alone the 38 year life of Transurban's ownership of City Link.
The question is not whether these medium term demographics will 
result in a fall in car based travel but whether this decline will be 
balanced by the increase in road travel that will flow from the 
downgrading or closure of the fixed rail network.
Why Build City Link.
We are faced with this conundrum: the rationale behind City Link is 
to speed up the movement of goods and people; but the goods of the 
new millennium, being ideas, will move at the speed of light over the 
telecommunications network, not snail like, along Melbourne's roads, 
and, making use of these goods, people will have far less need to 
travel To survive City Link must, at a minimum, see the downgrading, 
and preferably the closure, of the fixed rail public transport 
system. To achieve this end, it will have to encourage the building a 
new commercial centre on the fringe of the CBD, which will 
effectively destroy the CBD.
The dollar cost of this exercise will be enormous, perhaps $40 
billion, and this will take place just before the communications 
revolution completely reconfigures the city's built form; making this 
'new city' obsolete almost before it is built.
The ultimate question is, can Melbourne survive the medium term 
commercial losses this scenario suggests and, if it can, how will it 
fare in a world where physical strength has less value than 
cleverness.
Tony Knox October, 1996.