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We need more construction in Melbourne. Desperately.<\/p>\n
Yesterday, I drove a whole block without being stopped by a traffic control worker. Last weekend, the tradies doing road works on my street didn\u2019t start the jack hammer until 9.01am. That\u2019s a whole minute they let my family sleep. They should be kicked out of the union for that.<\/p>\n
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Commuters wait for bus replacements during road and rail closures during Westgate Tunnel works. <\/span>Credit: <\/span>Penny Stephens<\/cite><\/p>\n There are even rumours that construction workers in Parkville all took public transport into work, so they didn\u2019t snatch up all the parking spaces that local businesses rely on for staff and customers. What has this city come to?<\/p>\n Thankfully, this morning I had to take seven detours just to drive a kilometre down the road. For a moment, I was worried that Melbourne was becoming livable again.<\/p>\n Look, I get it. When you have great roads, they need to be maintained. When infrastructure breaks down it needs to be repaired \u2013 often urgently. When local councils have to spend their budgets before the end of the financial year, they may splash out on a fancy new park bench or a hideous art installation in Fitzroy.<\/p>\n State governments campaign for office with sexy buzzwords like \u201cexpansion\u201d and \u201cdevelopment for the future\u201d because they\u2019re a lot more exciting than more balanced ideas like \u201cmaintenance\u201d and \u201clet\u2019s take it easy for a while\u201d. Of course, we\u2019re going to keep developing the city. We\u2019re not Hobart for goodness\u2019s sake.<\/p>\n But when does the serenity of day-to-day life factor into the overall construction equation? We\u2019re lucky to live in such an affluent city, certainly, but surely, there are ways to make the inevitable disturbances from construction more bearable.<\/p>\n Perhaps instead of subjecting us to the harrowing experience of replacement buses for months on end, the train line can splurge on one of those fun disco limousines from time to time. Maybe when one of your neighbours is building a house, you get to record all the construction noise and play it back to them once they move in. When a road is closed for construction work, the businesses affected by it should each be sent a Millennial to teach them how to sell their goods on Facebook Marketplace. These may not be real solutions, but I\u2019ll leave those to the taxpayer-funded city council members to come up with.<\/p>\n Melburnians have become accustomed to road works in recent years.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Darrian Traynor<\/cite><\/p>\n Melbourne, which still has big projects like the Westgate Tunnel, the North East Link and Level Crossing Removals ahead of us for many years, doesn\u2019t have to hog all the development of new housing and infrastructure in Victoria either. Let\u2019s relocate some of the action to other cities like Geelong, Ballarat and Bendigo \u2013 their residents deserve to be woken up at 7am by power tools too.<\/p>\n They could do with a few more leisure centres, playgrounds, and Lego Lands. It may even go some way towards encouraging young couples to actually move out of Melbourne and buy a home somewhere they can comfortably work and raise a family \u2013 without losing out on all the benefits of a cosmopolitan city.<\/p>\n Yes, Melbourne\u2019s got all the cool laneway cafes and bars, but the country towns will catch up if we stop building 20 train stations between Flinders Street and Melbourne Central and allocate a few dollars towards development in other cities.<\/p>\n The new infrastructure in Melbourne will be great. No doubt. I\u2019m glad we\u2019re building a better future for our children\u2026 but when does that future actually get here? Twenty years? Forty years? I\u2019m beginning to think there is no real end goal for all this town planning and that the City of Melbourne is really just like a Boomer renovating every room in their house over and over so they have something to talk about to their friends.<\/p>\n All I\u2019m advocating for is a better balance between progress and peacefulness.<\/p>\n At least I can find some solace in the fact that I probably won\u2019t ever have to put up with the construction of a train line to the airport in my lifetime because they never seem to be able to get around to that.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n