Article: Rail plan with at least one obstacle: Footscray

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Rail plan with at least one obstacle: Footscray

Rail plan with at least one obstacle: Footscray
CLAY LUCAS
May 7, 2010

HOMES in a Footscray street that backs onto railway lines could be forcibly acquired to widen the rail corridor.

Railway Place residents whose homes back onto the line have received ''intention to enter'' notices from the Department of Transport, demanding access to their backyards for soil, rock and groundwater testing. The houses could ultimately be acquired as part of a $4.3 billion project called Regional Rail Link, 47 kilometres of new tracks to be laid from Werribee to the CBD.

More than half a billion dollars for the project in Tuesday's state budget included money for land acquisition.

Planning for parts of the line near Werribee, mostly through empty grasslands, is nearing completion.

But the project, which will provide dedicated tracks for V/Line trains, has one big problem: getting through Footscray.

One option being considered is an expensive rail tunnel under the suburb.

Another option - proposed by RMIT transport planner Paul Mees and backed by former World Bank rail planner Ed Dotson - is to go through a little-used rail tunnel that runs under Footscray. The Department of Transport, it appears, is not considering this option.

The third option, and the other the department is considering, is bulldozing the rail corridor so it can be widened to accommodate new tracks.

Residents in Railway Place yesterday began a campaign against their homes being taken to widen the railway corridor.

''We already have trains in our backyards, and we don't object to having more, so this isn't a case of not-in-my-backyard syndrome,'' one resident, Elonie Prenter, said.

''Better options are to build a rail tunnel, or to build on land [on the other side of the rail tracks] that has been set aside for development,'' she said.

In all, 49 properties in Footscray have received the ''intention to enter'' orders from the Department of Transport.

Many residents of old cottages in the street - which has a heritage overlay, with most houses built between the 1880s and 1920s - visited a government transport information centre in Footscray.

Staff at the centre, which cost $190,000 to establish and $70,000 a year to run, had no answers. So the residents wrote to the government a month ago. Their written questions remain unanswered.

Department of Transport spokeswoman Ilsa Colson said the department was ''working hard to complete the design in order to address the concerns expressed by those in Railway Place and elsewhere''.

RMIT's Dr Mees said the government's inability to say where the train line would run 18 months after it was announced was proof the project had not been properly thought through.

The Rudd government last year gave the line $3.2 billion in public funding because it was ''shovel ready''.

''This project makes Building the Education Revolution and the insulation scheme look like they were well-planned and gave value for money,'' Dr Mees said.