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
Discussions about the funding of the project continued into late April. The state government acknowledged that the Abbott federal government would not make any contribution to the project, but stated that it remained "hopeful" a future federal government would change the policy. Towards the end of the month, the Andrews government announced that $1.5 billion would be allocated in the upcoming state Budget for the full cost of pre-construction works, land and property acquisition and detailed route investigations, on top of the already announced money for planning. Among the work funded was drilling 140 bore holes to establish ground conditions along the route. However, questions remained about the state government's capacity to fund the remainder of the project, and it was reported that no business case had been completed, despite this being Labor's key objection to the Melbourne Rail Link plan when in opposition. A levy on land tax for commercial properties benefiting from the tunnel, similar to that used on the City Loop and on the contemporary London Crossrail project, was proposed as one possible solution. At the same time the funding announcement was made, MMRA announced it had appointed technical and planning advisors for the project.