Melbourne's Level Crossing Removals: Worth It or Wasteful?

The Big Promise

Since 2015, the Victorian Labor government has made level crossing removals a centrepiece of its transport policy - and its election strategy. The program promised to eliminate 110 dangerous and congested level crossings across Melbourne by 2030, replacing them with rail over or underpasses. On the surface, it sounds like exactly the kind of practical infrastructure Melburnians need.

But dig into the numbers, the process, and the outcomes, and a more complicated picture emerges - one that raises serious questions about how infrastructure decisions get made, who really benefits, and whether Victorians would have spent this money differently if they'd actually been asked.

What Has This Cost?

The Level Crossing Removal Project (LXRP) is one of the largest infrastructure programs in Victorian history. Here's what we know:

• The original program budget was approximately $6 billion for the first 50 crossings
• By 2022, the state government's own infrastructure watchdog, Infrastructure Victoria, noted that individual project costs had ballooned significantly
• The Caulfield to Dandenong corridor removal - covering nine crossings - came in at approximately $1.6 billion, or roughly $178 million per crossing
• Some individual removals have exceeded $200 million for a single intersection
• The total committed spend across all 110 crossings is now estimated at over $13 billion

For context, that's more than the federal government spends on the entire Australian rail network in a typical year.

Why the Program Exists - And Why It Persists

Level crossings are genuinely dangerous. Crashes at level crossings kill around 30 Australians per year nationally, and Melbourne's flat geography means trains and roads intersect constantly. Peak-hour congestion at crossings in suburbs like Ringwood, Frankston, and Sunshine causes real economic and social harm.

So the problem is real. The question is whether this solution, at this cost, in this order is the right answer.

The program persists for reasons that have less to do with evidence and more to do with politics:

• It's highly visible. Politicians can point to cranes, tunnels, and ribbon-cuttings. Voters see something happening.
• It delivers to marginal seats. Analysis by outlets including The Age has shown that crossing removals have been disproportionately concentrated in Labor-held marginal electorates in Melbourne's south-east - not necessarily the crossings with the worst safety records or highest traffic volumes.
• The construction industry benefits enormously. Major contractors including CPB Contractors and John Holland have won billions in work. The industry is a significant donor to both major parties.
• Once started, it's almost impossible to stop. Sunk cost logic, contracts, and political embarrassment keep the bulldozers moving.

What the Critics Say

This program has attracted criticism from across the political spectrum and from independent experts:

Infrastructure Victoria - the government's own independent advisory body - has repeatedly emphasised that demand management, bus rapid transit, and targeted rail frequency improvements could deliver better outcomes per dollar in many corridors. Those recommendations have largely been ignored.

The opposition Liberal Party, to be fair, has not meaningfully opposed the program either. They've criticised specific costs and contracts, but when in government themselves, they pursued similar high-visibility infrastructure logic. Neither major party has a clean record here.

Who Bears the Cost?

Victoria now carries one of the highest levels of state debt in Australian history - exceeding $165 billion as of 2024, with debt servicing costs consuming an ever-larger share of the budget. This constrains spending on health, education, mental health services, and housing - areas where Victorians consistently say they want investment.

Communities near construction sites have endured years of noise, traffic disruption, property compulsory acquisitions, and the demolition of local streetscapes. In some cases, the elevated rail structures built as part of removals have been criticised for dividing communities and reducing amenity in ways the original crossings never did.

What Would Voters Actually Choose?

This is the crucial question - and it's one no Victorian government has ever seriously asked.

When Essential Research and similar pollsters ask Australians about infrastructure priorities, hospital capacity, housing affordability, and public transport frequency consistently rank above major road-rail grade separations. Melburnians who sit in traffic or wait 20 minutes for a bus aren't primarily suffering from level crossings - they're suffering from infrequent services, unreliable trains, and a bus network that hasn't been meaningfully redesigned in decades.

A government that genuinely answered to its citizens - rather than to marginal seat calculus and construction industry relationships - might have made very different choices with $13 billion.

Why This Is a Direct Democracy Issue

The level crossing removal program is a case study in how major spending decisions get made without meaningful public input. It was announced as an election promise designed to win seats, not as the output of any community consultation, independent cost-benefit analysis, or participatory planning process.

At Direct Democracy, we believe Victorians - and all Australians - deserve a direct say in how their money is spent. Not a vague mandate derived from a three-year election cycle, but real, ongoing participation in the decisions that shape their lives and their state's finances.

If members of a direct democracy platform were voting on whether to commit $13 billion to this program versus alternatives, the debate would at minimum be happening in public, with full information, and with genuine accountability for the outcome.

That's the system we're building.

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