05/08/2026
Needless to say, we're supporters of Melbourne's Suburban Rail Loop.
It's critical, modern infrastructure for a city of millions.
Public transport projects - and even modest improvements in general - can often be politicised. Often, ideological thinking can see good projects cancelled or shelved while expensive road projects survive.
We hope the SRL Project continues all the way to completion!
There’s a very sudden strategic media campaign on the Suburban Rail Loop and Melbourne Airport Rail, and the message being pushed at Ben Carroll is 'Cut the Loop'.
The Herald Sun is saying that polling commissioned shows a "majority of Victorians want the Suburban Rail Loop dumped". This is because Carroll has said the airport rail is his highest public transport priority, which is fair enough because Melbourne Airport rail should have been built about 20 years ago.
Frankly, Melbourne needs both the loop and the airport rail which is overdue. Embarrassingly overdue.
We are a major global city with a major airport and no rail link. Tourists arrive, residents return, business travellers land, and then everyone gets funnelled into cars, taxis, buses and private transfers like the public transport gods lost a bet.
Build airport rail. Build it properly. Build it yesterday. Build it before the next generation is explaining to their children that Melbourne once planned airport rail back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth and Myki still didn’t work properly.
The SRL is not just “another train line”. It's a 90-kilometre orbital line linking major train services from the Frankston Line to the Werribee Line via Melbourne Airport, with SRL East delivering 26 kilometres of twin tunnels and six new underground stations.
It's massive because Melbourne is not just the CBD with suburbs scattered around it like crumbs. It is a giant city with universities, hospitals, job clusters, shopping centres, industrial areas, research precincts and communities that need to connect to each other without every journey being dragged through the Flinders like a confession.
We need a way to travel parallel between suburbs by train. We need cross-suburban links. We need orbital movement. We need to stop pretending that every trip begins or ends in the CBD, because Melbourne stopped being that simple a very long time ago.
The Dandenong Journal says more than 150 readers weighed in on the SRL debate. More than 150 readers is not “Victoria”. This post will probably get more respondents than that, and I am not proposing to declare myself the Victorian Electoral Commission with a handsome pickle.
The Herald Sun polling is from Freshwater Strategy, which can tell you what people prefer when presented with a choice. It does not automatically tell you what a growing city will need over the next 30, 40 or 50 years.
People will always prefer the project they already understand.
Airport rail is easy to explain. Airport. Train. Done. Everyone gets it. You land at Tullamarine and get on a train like a normal world city. Beautiful. No notes.
The SRL is harder. It is about future travel patterns, suburban jobs, orbital movement, pressure off radial lines, roads, land use, housing, universities, health precincts and a city gradually changing shape. That is much harder to fit into a rage graphic with Ben Carroll’s face and the words CUT THE LOOP in emergency-room font.
I’ve reached out to Carroll. (Oi, check your emails.)
Because this debate matters. Not just politically, but structurally. Melbourne has been underbuilt for too long. Its infrastructure has been forced to catch up with a world-class city that grew faster than its systems. The level crossings needed to go. The Metro Tunnel was needed. Airport rail is needed. And yes, some form of orbital rail is needed too.
It does not mean the SRL should be immune from review. It does not mean cost blowouts are fine, governance does not matter, or people should shut up and clap every time someone announces a tunnel with a hard hat and a haunted smile.
Scrutiny matters. Costings matter. Sequencing matters. Debt matters. Delivery matters. If the project needs tightening, tighten it. If parts need staging, stage them. If the business case needs defending, defend it like adults. If the communication has been poor, fix it.
It is fascinating watching how quickly the campaign against it has ramped up around a brand-new Premier who is clearly trying to reset the government, elevate airport rail, and survive an election year without being consumed by the infrastructure dragon his party has been feeding for a decade.
Melbourne needed airport rail 20 years ago.
Melbourne also needs a rail network that recognises people live, work, study and move across the suburbs, not just in and out of the CBD like the Capitol in Hunger Games.
A serious city can hold both thoughts at once.
A serious media campaign should be able to as well.
