Railways in Melbourne
In February 2015, the State Government established the Melbourne Metro Rail Authority to oversee planning for new twin 9-kilometre rail tunnels through the central city between South Kensington station and South Yarra. The new Metro Tunnel will have five new underground stations and connect the Pakenham and Cranbourne lines with the Sunbury line, creating a new route through the CBD as an alternative to the City Loop. New underground stations will be created at Arden, Parkville, Domain and two new CBD stations, State Library and Town Hall. Enabling works were underway by 2016 and major construction work on the tunnel and stations began in 2017.The project has an estimated cost of $11 billion and is scheduled to be complete by 2025.
Metro Tunnel
On the other hand, transport economist Chris Hale has argued that while the capacity increase offered by the tunnel is real and probably more significant than that offered by incremental upgrades to the existing network, the project is the product of poor planning processes in the Victorian transport bureacracy and consequently reflects a "single-issue" approach to infrastructure which is inconsistent with contemporary best practice. Hale contends that the tunnel's route, which reinforces existing transport networks and focuses on the inner city as the single connection point of all transport, exemplifies outmoded thinking and, therefore, achieves its primary aims while failing to accomplish more extensive benefits for a similar cost.