Keen to hear people’s thoughts. Personally I think the SRL will change how Melbourne works in ways current modelling won’t consider. That comes at a high cost, but is it too high?
I think it sounds great in theory, but there’s a few issues I have with it.
A) There are many other projects that are way more important than this, like the airport rail, for instance. B) The project (or at least stage 1) mainly benefits all the rich people out east who already have exceptionally good public transport, yet again leaving all us in the West screwed over with pathetic public transport. C) Stage 1 seems to be the best thought out and most likely to happen. The rest of it feels like it was tacked on just to try and make people in the West a bit happier about it
I just think it’s a bit absurd we’re not improving connectivity in the middle suburbs (15 km in ALL directions) and densifying there instead.
Melbourne is absurdly spread out.
We need to density by:
- Bringing back government employed building inspectors (builders/customer still need to pay the fee)
- updating building standards to make mid-rise apartments excellent quality
- update laws governing owners corporations to prevent:
- the developer controlling the committee because it still owns 50% of lots (I would say they should be barred from any voting, at all, and should not be allowed to award long-term strata management contracts)
- overrule councils keeping the “character of their neighbourhood” which just usually means they want to hoard land for the wealthy instead of densifying. This has largely now begun, but sadly without the first 3 points…
