THE federal opposition will spend $2.2 billion on the Suburban Rail Loop project if it wins this weekend’s federal election.
Labor leader Anthony Albanese made the announcement alongside Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews last week.
The first stop on the Suburban Rail Loop is planned to be on the Frankston line in Cheltenham. The completed rail loop will link all major rail lines from Frankston to Werribee, and provide a long-awaited railway connection to Melbourne Airport.
Construction on the SRL East section of the project, running from the Frankston line to Box Hill, has begun. The opposition’s announced funding will go towards construction costs. SRL East is projected to cost more than $30 billion according to a business case released last year, with trains running by 2035.
Labor leader Anthony Albanese said that project would “change how Melburnians live and how they interact with their city.”
“I won’t be a Prime Minister that uses infrastructure to play political games, I will be a Prime Minister who invests in the projects that matter,” he said.
Premier Daniel Andrews welcomed the announcement, saying that the Suburban Rail Loop will “change the way we move around the state, slashing travel times and taking more cars off our roads for faster, safer journeys.”
“We welcome federal Labor’s contribution to the Suburban Rail Loop, which will support thousands of Victorian jobs in the coming years. It’s a project Victorians voted for – and we’re getting on with it,” he said.
The state government hopes that the trip from Cheltenham to Box Hill will take 22 minutes once the project is finished. It is planning that the SRL East section of the railway line will be used by 70,000 passengers a day.