Building a tunnel under Perth could be the solution to the Carillon City development disruption

Published May 29, 2025, 4:40 AM
No description provided

There's a the City of Perth a considering a traffic tunnel. I've never heard of this before, considering a traffic tunnel under the city. Professor Peter Newman from kurt Uni Professor of Sustainability joins us. Now, hi, Peter, how are you good.

I'm fine, And it's a traffic tunnel just to get trucks in to help build the site. It's not going to be a long term traffic tunnel. So it's a bit different to what you quite thought. I had to have a quick look at it because it worried me. We're going to try and build a great big road under Perth, which would be a real waste of money. And you've felt that too.

Well, They're not cheap, are these things. So this is under the Murray Street more connects the Forest Place Basement Reserve with the new basement area of the proposed Carethian development. So, Peter, you're hearing that it's just for construction traffic.

Yes, it's construction only. And look, it's a very important development this Karellian city. I think it's a missing link. There's now a lot more pedestrians in Perth than cars. It's for the first time for a hundred years, you can say that. So people are coming pouring in from the railway station and they go through that area and they hit the Karelian area. It's hard to get through there, it's not very attractive. And then they go through all the way to Saint George's Terrace and all those developments and Forrest, the Elizabeth Key and all that. So the tourists, for example, there's nothing much there for them. Haystreet mall's been running down, so it does need redevelopment and it does need access. So they've come up with a clever solution of going under it because there's a whole lot of space under there, but there's some that I'll have to dig out as well. My problem is that we'll have to have a pedestrian strategy to get around it, you know, because at the moment that's going to go through two of the most frequently used areas, the Forest Place and Murray Street more. But so you can't just sort of load it up with dirt and junk and say where we're trying to make your future better. You're going to have to have a place where all the pedestrians can easily go around and so that will take a bit of doing so it is a challenge, but it's not quite a big freeway under the city, all.

Right, Okay, hey, thanks for thanks for correcting us on that one, Peter. Is there anywhere in your consideration in the city, in the metro area where a tunnel would be helpful? I know they're very expensive. You're often drilling and making tunnels in a sort of a water environment. You know, you're in marg'reine clay, you're in water. Is there anywhere where we might need a tunnel to think?

Probably? Not. The only thing we really needed was to get the train through. That was a very big thing and that that caused a lot of controversy at the time and a lot of tunnel experts said, oh, it'll never work. And of course it's been brilliant and that's that's a major part of Perth now, to be able to go through the city like that, and you know, it's hard to imagine the place without it, and that's an important thing to realize. So I don't think there's anything much more. I reckon it's all about fixing the streets now so that we can have better access for pedestrians because they're now the biggest numbers, and that's how you make money. That's how you attract housing in more housing, more tourists, more activity. Because Perth is needs needing more activity. It's it's losing out on that. So we need to make it a really attractive place for the future. Peter.

Last time I spoke to you, I was talking to you about the trackless tramp that sat on the city of Stealing fore Court for a while and you know us federal government money and I think you and I'm paraphrasing here, Peter, I apologize. I've got this ring you said. This is this is like the mobile phone. This is an absolute game change of this one. I don't reckon. We're going to get at Peter. And there may be some liberal labor politics in all of this.

Yeah, interesting one. We talked about this this week. There's a study being done on central Perth by the girl group from Denmark that has done two other studies before that led to Elizabeth Key and lots of other innovations in Perth which we love now. So they're good people and they're very keen on a trackless tram coming through to the city from our curtain way. And then up through to the North out to Sterling. Look, it's it's growing in acceptance the bottom up processes. The local governments love it, the developers love it, the communities love it. There's a lot of issues with the bus industry that don't particularly want it because they think it's taking over from them. All of that has to be worked through, and I think it will be because it's it is like a mobile phone. You can't you can't go back to the old phone systems. This changed our lives. Everybody in the world now is this mobile phone, and that will happen with these smart systems that are coming in with with the public transport. They are so much better. They're not just like a diesel bus that's converted to run on electricity. It's not. It's a lot better than that.

Yeah, just a final one from me, a bit of chat around about improving the ferry systems on the river. We've tried them before and didn't have a great take up. You know, perhaps it's hard to get to a ferry terminal. It's a little bit slow. People prefer to drive the car or use the train. Do you think there's a case to expand our ferry systems Peter.

Yeah, look, it's a little bit. They could They could definitely get better and they'll go up the river a bit more around to the area around the Optics Stadium and that sort of thing that they have special uses. But they're never a mass transit solution. They never are going to carry a lot of people because you can't get to them easily and it's Perth River winds a lot, so it takes a lot of time. No, we're not going to be able to compete with how quick to get from A to B, which is what transports mostly about. Our trains are now showing you can do it better than in a car on many of our routes. So if you didn't get from South Perth to Perth quicker than by going by car, and that would be during peak hour, for example, then you know it's got a future. And there may be a few more sites like that. To UWA for example, was one, But I don't see it as a big solution.

Yeah all right, Yeah, I think when we tried it back in the day, the PTA tried to Peter and they even offered up, you know, free coffee in a free newspaper on the the trial and people still didn't use it.

So yeah, you can't bribe people interchanging in the transport. And as it's better, we've got to get something better and that includes bidding faster and cheaper and better, better ride all of that. People are not stupid that they're going to choose rather than getting all those incentives. So yeah, I look we're getting to grips with these. I think the trackless trend, for example, is a better option. It's going to be cheaper and better and faster, and it's the kind of thing that will help our main roads get better.

Yeah, very interesting that you reckon the bus industry doesn't like it. Peter, always good to chat. Thank you for your time today.