The 1969 Melbourne Transportation Plan was a road and rail transport plan for Melbourne, the state capital of Victoria, Australia, instituted by Henry Bolte's state government. Most prominently, the plan recommended the provision of an extensive freeway network, much of which has since been built. Despite the majority of the printed material being devoted to non-car transport, 86 per cent of the projected budget was devoted to roads and parking, with only 14 per cent to other forms of transport. The plan recommended of freeways for metropolitan Melbourne, as well as a number of railways. Of the latter, only the City Underground Loop was constructed. Proposed lines to Doncaster and Monash University, and between Dandenong and Frankston, were never built. The plan was described by J.M. Thompson in Great Cities and their Traffic as "clearly... a highway plan, not – as it is called – a comprehensive transport plan", and by historian Graeme Davison as "the most expansive and expensive freeway experiment in Australian history". In 1973, some freeway plans were pruned, especially those proposed for the inner city, with State PremierRupert Hamer cancelling all the road reservations for the unbuilt urban freeways in 1976. Some significant outer suburban freeway projects, under new branding, were built by subsequent governments, including CityLink, EastLink and Peninsula Link.
Background
The plan consisted of three volumes:
Survey – completed for the Melbourne Transportation Committee by Wilbur Smith & Associates and Len T. Frazer & Associates
Parking – completed for the Melbourne Transportation Committee by Wilbur Smith & Associates and Len T. Frazer & Associates
The Transportation Plan – completed by the Melbourne Transportation Committee.
The scope of the plan specified surveys of vehicular and personal travel, transport facilities, goods movement by road and rail, and central city parking. It built on the previous major Melbourne Transport Plans:
Minor contributions were provided by Melbourne City Council and the Transport Regulation Board.
Methodology
The process adopted was:
Inventory of transport facilities, travel and developmental features of the study area
Forecast of 1985 travel requirements
Evaluation of tentative 1985 plan
Periodic review
Organisation
The organisation required to develop the plan included:
Metropolitan Transportation Committee – a statutory body established in 1963 to advise government on all transport factors
Technical Committee – consisting of senior representatives of transportation and other authorities on the main committee, its job was to oversee all technical matters arising during surveys and preparation of the plan
Consultants – Wilbur Smith and Associates and Len T Frazer and Associates
Study Group – engineers who were assigned from participating authorities to be trained by the consultants and assist in data collection and analysis This group was expanded to include economists responsible for costing the final plan
Road
The plan proposed a budget of:
$1.675 billion for freeways
$64 million for divided arterial roads
$28 million on new arterial roads
$359 million on widening existing roads and bridges
* Huntingdale - Ferntree Gully extension - Rowville Line
* Dandenong - Frankston extension
* Altona - Westona extension
$8 million for extensions of suburban electric service along existing lines to Werribee, Rockbank, Sunbury, Craigieburn, Coldstream, Hastings and Mornington
$42 million for route capacity improvements on existing lines
$2 million for new stations to be built on existing lines
$35 million on additional suburban trains
$15 million on modal interchanges
Trams
The plan included a proposed budget $55 million for 910 new trams.
