A $2bn Perth freight link, which is set to receive additional federal funding as part of the GST deal struck between the federal and Western Australian governments, is “very poor planning” and a “waste of public money”, according to a Curtin University report.
The report, released on Thursday by the university’s sustainability policy institute director, Peter Newman, says the new truck tollway is a “troubling project” which will have “substantial impacts that are now obvious and which were not part of the planning process due to the rush to accept the Federal largesse”.
The freight link was announced in February last year with a $925m funding commitment from the Abbott government. The first stage of the project, which will begin with the controversial Roe 8 extension through the Beeliar Wetlands and approach Fremantle from the south, is set to cost $1.5bn and is due to start construction early next year.
The state government had committed $650m to the project, which it says will remove 500 trucks a day from the congested 70km/h Leach Highway.
On Tuesday, the Western Australian premier, Colin Barnett, named the freight link as the most likely recipient of additional funding from the federal government, to be provided in lieu of a GST rate freeze.
He told reporters he expected the state would get an extra $500m-600m in infrastructure funding to make up the fall in GST allocation from 37 cents in the dollar last year to 30 cents in the dollar this year – enough to complete the road without spending any state funds.
But Newman’s report, co-authored with urban design researcher Cole Hendrigan, says the funding would be better spent developing links to the proposed outer harbour container port development in Kwinana, which would take pressure off Fremantle port.
The report says plans for the new road have “completely subverted” Western Australia’s long-term freight strategy based solely on “a ‘captain’s call’ from Canberra.”
By 2050, according to the Fremantle port authority’s own proposals, the amount of freight through the port would have grown from 700,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU) per year to three million, split evenly between inner and outer harbour terminals – construction of the latter being due to start in 2020.
About 30% of that freight would travel by rail, which would mean there would be 57% more trucks driving into North Fremantle in 25 years time, which Newman said was a “substantially managed increase”.
He added that if the freight link is built, there would be no incentive to increase the amount of freight travelling by rail, because the government would want trucks to use and pay for the toll road, and there would be no money to develop road links to the outer harbour.
“It has been decided on very narrow political grounds to solve a ‘truck problem’ in one part of the city and to offload it onto another,” the report says. “This is very poor planning.”
Newman told Guardian Australia the Perth freight link, Melbourne’s now scuttled East-West link and Sydney’s proposed Westconnex motorway had all “dropped out of the sky because of a ‘captain’s call’ in Canberra,” and “all three of them are dogs”.
Greens senator Scott Ludlam said the report, coming from a respected policy centre, “should be the final nail in the coffin” for the Perth freight link project. “I strongly believe that it won’t go ahead,” he said.
“We have got an identical situation here [to the East-West link] and that just lost the Napthine government office. So I am very confident that it can be stopped.”
The Western Australian transport minister, Dean Nalder, did not respond to a request for comment.
