Embedded Files
The Wrong Design
“Some of the best engineers, designers and builders from across Australia
and around the world have worked for years
to refine the design of North East Link to ensure it delivers
the best outcome for the whole community.”
Duncan Elliott, Chief Executive of the North East Link project
Sunday Herald Sun, pg 30, 12 February 2023
Rob Morgan is a road safety engineer and traffic engineer, based in Bulleen.
He has over 50 years professional experience.
Get a copy of Rob's CV from the
Free Downloads page.
Despite North East Link's total price tag of $26 billion (in 2024),
in Bulleen it is a cut-price design that
will cause congestion and crashes.
Rob Morgan
The bottom line is . . .
North East Link (aka MRPV) is building the wrong project in Bulleen
- and they and the state government refuse to engage in any meaningful discussion to make improvements
to avoid future congestion and road safety problems in Bulleen.
🤐Secrecy
What exactly is the final design for the following project elements:
North East Link in Bulleen?
The Eastern Freeway adjacent to Bulleen?
The ramp connections between the Eastern Freeway and North East Link?
The ramp connections between North East Link and (a) Thompsons Road (main northerly tunnel ramps), and (b) Banksia Street (southerly tunnel ramps only) in Bulleen?
The rebuilt and realigned Bulleen Road in Bulleen?
Who knows? Not me, or anyone else outside the project. These designs are not publicly available, due to confidentiality agreements between North East Link and their consultants and contractors. Even the 'Independent Reviewer' cannot show the plans to anyone outside the project - which begs the question:
How can the public have any confidence that the designs will be suitable, safe and effective?
Why and how has it gone so horribly wrong?
The Original 'Reference Design'
The original design in Bulleen was generally satisfactory, except for the dangerous proposal to have the eastbound exit off the Eastern Freeway to Bulleen Road designed as a right hand exit off the freeway-to-freeway ramp that will lead to North East Link (to see my letter to North East Link about this (November 2019) - Click here). This was the design that was subject to a major public inquiry, as part of the approvals process.
The Major Design Change in October 2021 (and first shown on plans for the public in May 2022)
Then the bids came in and the government accepted the one that included longer tunnels past Macleod and major design changes in Bulleen. These changes and their most obvious consequences are explained in an Opinion piece I wrote to The Age newspaper on 30th May 2022. It was not published. In fact The Age has never published an Opinion piece critical of the North East Link's design in Bulleen. But they did promote the Macleod residents' calls for longer tunnels at the north end to save trees (which were later all removed). Here is what I wrote:
New North East Link Design a Road Safety Disaster
by Rob Morgan, 30 May 2022
The recently announced changes to the North East Link will appeal to people who prefer trees over traffic. That's fair enough. But for people who will use the new road, some of these changes spell disaster. More crashes, more congestion and more delays. The reason for this is the removal of a critical feature of the original project – the ramps giving access from Banksia Street-Manningham Road to the tunnels under the Yarra to Greensborough.
This design change was not mentioned in the October 2021 announcement of the longer – and $2 billion costlier – tunnels. Even now it has only come to light on ‘urban design and landscape plans’. Given the great fanfare about so many other aspects of the new design, one could be forgiven for thinking that North East Link Project and the government have something to hide.
The ramps in the area of Banksia Street-Manningham Road have been replaced by new northerly ramps connecting to Thompsons Road, further south. This means large parts of Heidelberg, Eaglemont and Ivanhoe will no longer have easy access to the tunnels. Some people will find their way to the new ramps via local street shortcuts in North Balwyn. But most will be forced to keep using Rosanna Road and Greensborough Road, a far less safe option than the freeway. As one of the objectives of North East Link is to get traffic off Rosanna Road, this rather defeats the purpose. North East Link Project claims the new design will take 14,700 vehicle per day off Bulleen Road. That may or may not be so. What is not mentioned is the extra traffic on Rosanna Road, Greensborough Road and Thompsons Road.
The most serious road safety problems will be around the new Thompsons Road interchange. To vacate the area for the new ramps, the Bulleen Bus Interchange on the new Doncaster Busway has been squeezed into a smaller site beside Kampman Street. This site has no pedestrian bridge over the freeway to North Balwyn. Pedestrian access to the local area north of Thompsons Road is indirect and will result in people running across Thompsons Road between poorly located traffic signals. How does this align with the government’s objectives of improving public transport use and promoting walking and cycling?
Pedestrians who venture around the Bulleen Road / Thompsons Road intersection will have complicated traffic islands and traffic directions to cope with. One length of footpath has been completely removed to fit the new ramps in. The devil is indeed in the detail.
But the most obvious design blunders will affect drivers accessing the tunnels at Thompsons Road. The proposed right turn access off the Bulleen Road freeway bridge, to enter the tunnel is bizarre. The lanes split in the middle of the intersection and drivers will have to instantly decide which way to go: to the tunnel or Thompsons Road. Traffic engineers are used to shoddy designs where road designers expect traffic engineers to fix the problem with traffic signs. But, as someone who has been on the national traffic signing standards committee for decades, and has a solid understanding of human factors in traffic design, I can say without doubt this is the worst example of shoddy design I have ever seen. It cannot be fixed with more signs; unfamiliar drivers will not cope.
The Bulleen Road freeway bridge is the only access south for Bulleen residents. With this area made more congested, and with crashes caused by the bizarre design, residents will have nowhere else to go.
The only viable answer is to restore the original ramps in the Manningham Road / Bulleen Road area (Greenaway Street to be precise) and abandon plans for ramps onto Thompsons Road.
How is it that the state pays $2 billion more and we get a worse outcome? The Auditor-General’s Office may one day enquire. Private/public road projects are prone to this type of problem, due to the profit motive and the loss of technical skills to scrutinise plans by state agencies. Over the past year hundreds of the most experienced people in the Department of Transport have been offered early retirement, to balance the books. All that experience is gone forever. And once major project commitments are made there is great pressure to ‘just get it built’.
Two decades ago I and others publicly warned of the road safety and congestion problems with the shoddy arrangement of ramps proposed where the Bolte Bridge joins the West Gate Freeway. It was major news in The Age in July 1999. The warnings were rejected. After the bridge opened there was an unsuccessful $3 million fix up, followed by two much more expensive total makeovers – all because the original advice was ignored.
On North East Link the state has the opportunity to repeat all the mistakes that were made at the end of the Bolte Bridge. But the opportunities to fix them later do not exist. The Bolte Bridge is in an industrial area and all ramps are above ground. By contrast, Bulleen and North Balwyn are residential areas and the freeway is in tunnel.
There is only one time to get the project right and that is now.
Who Designed These Hazardous Road Layouts in Bulleen?
Who is responsible for these mediocre and hazardous designs in Bulleen? This is discussed near the bottom of this web page.
The plans below show the design changes at Bulleen Road / Manningham Road (based on the original Reference Design plan):
The Original Reference Design
Light green is above ground and tangerine is below ground. If looking at plans is not your forte, ignore the tangerine parts (the tunnels) and just look at the light green roads. With this design there is full access to/from North East Link main tunnels.
The October 2021 Changes
All the northerly ramps have been deleted (see plan): no access to/from North East Link main tunnels.
Instead, these northerly ramps were shifted down to Thompsons Road - where few people from Heidelberg or Templestowe are likely to use them.
What is Left at Manningham Road
Access to the south (the M3 Eastern Freeway) from Heidelberg is about all that's left here. You can exit from the south, into Bulleen, but you can't enter from Bulleen to go south. All those businesses in Bulleen were demolished for no good reason.
This Change is a Major Strategic Road Planning Blunder
North East Link will become part of the major freeway network around Melbourne.
Drivers don't just drive on freeways, or connect from one freeway to another. The purpose of North East Link is not just to link the Eastern Freeway to the M80 Ring Road freeway.
All drivers need to use arterial roads to get between a freeway and the place they need to reach. In other words, freeways need to connect to the major arterial roads across Melbourne, so they can perform their important role in getting people from one area to another. If they don't connect to major arterial roads, freeways fail to relieve surface arterial roads of longer-distance travel: the huge financial investment in freeways is not fully recouped to benefit the community.
Yet with the October 2021 changes to the North East Link design, this is exactly what is being done: North East Link (now part of MRPV, Major Road Projects Victoria)
has removed the northerly ramps to/from the North East Link under-Yarra tunnels that were to connect with Manningham Road. This new major freeway
to/from the north has no connection to the only major east-west arterial road it crosses (Bell Street - Banksia Street - Manningham Road).
The consequences of this major strategic road planning blunder are that large parts of Heidelberg, Eaglemont and Ivanhoe will no longer have easy access to the tunnels. Some people will find their way to the new ramps via local street shortcuts in North Balwyn. But most will be forced to keep using Rosanna Road and Greensborough Road, which rather defeats the purpose of building North East Link. North East Link Project claims the new design will take 14,700 vehicle per day off Bulleen Road in Bulleen (a road quite capable of carrying that traffic). What is not mentioned is the extra traffic on Thompsons Road, as well as on Rosanna Road and Greensborough Road.
This is yet another costly example of the adverse consequences of the neoliberalism fad that has plagued this state government - and other governments - for the past four decades (the downsizing and outsourcing of government functions that require technical expertise and experience) and the consequent adoption of managerialism (having managers of technical areas who have no direct experience or expertise in the areas they manage - because the necessary experts have been removed). In this example the consequences are long term. Here, it's a case of letting road builders (the North East Link project, aka MRPV) make strategic road planning decisions. Road builders and road designers ain't road planners or transport planners. (And frankly, from what follows on this page, it would appear that in these days of lost government agency skills, they ain't much good at the details of road design either).
Doesn't it Look Pretty?
Looking north-west over the site of the cut-and-cover tunnels, taken from the old Tao's Restaurant driveway off Bulleen Road, 50 m north of Golden Way (5th November 2024).
Yes, there's plenty of motorway tunnel being built just below the surface.
But there is something major missing here. There should be ramps coming in from the right (at old Greenaway Street, 100 m away) and heading off into the distance, to the north, to connect with the tunnels to be built under the Yarra River, going up to the M80 Ring Road.
Those northerly ramps were deleted by North East Link in 2021.
They can still be slotted in, if someone in a position of power or influence decided to build the original Reference Design interchange here.
Imagine spending $26 billion (2024 estimate) and not connecting this major north-south freeway with the only major east-west arterial road in the area (Bell Street-Banksia Street-Manningham Road)!
You don't have to imagine it. It is being done right now in Bulleen, at a great cost to the community (including the consequent creation of the 'Forever Problem' at Thompsons Road). Meanwhile North East Link (MRPV) and the State Government pretend the problem does not exist.
Emergency Responses to any Tunnel Incidents
The last plan above shows how the previously planned northerly ramps have been deleted at Greenaway Street, near Manningham Road (The yellow Xs on the plan).
Entry and exit to or from the tunnels is now 1.6 km further south, at Thompsons Road.
But North East Link's operators are going to build their operations centre on the Greenaway Street alignment in Bulleen, where the ramps were going to be. This is where they plan to garage their incident response vehicles. This means that if there is an incident in one of the tunnels and they need to access that incident from the south, these emergency vehicles will have to travel 3.2 km extra to reach it (1.6 km down Bulleen Road to the tunnel portals and 1.6 km back along the tunnel to reach the point under where they started, at Greenaway Street): see my project map, above. That adds up to a long delay in reaching an incident, when time is critical.
Or perhaps they have a plan to travel the wrong way down the Banksia Street exit ramp which might be jammed with exiting vehicles after the incident, then U turn to head north? Or do a U turn on Banksia Street, go down the southbound entry ramp and U turn where it joins the main southbound lanes? We don't know, as there is no published emergency response plan for the proposed operation of North East Link (Well, not one I could find after a lengthy internet search).
Note: at the north end, at Greensborough Road, the same problem has not arisen as the southerly ramps are still located near where they were originally planned and the emergency response vehicles will be garaged nearby.
Now look at the safety implications of this at Thompsons Road, North East Link's 'Forever Problem'.
This will be the biggest congestion and crash problem site on this project:
Here is my first assessment of the major problems, produced in October 2022. It formed the basis for the article in the Sunday Herald Sun on 12th February 2023.
To see my Media Statement, October 2022 - Click here
To see the Herald Sun article on Thompsons Road Interchange, 12 February 2023 - Click here
Other issues identified since then include:
The 'Dangerous right turn' off Thompsons Road (e.g. at quiet times, with no other vehicles to prompt unfamiliar drivers) may include going down the exit ramp from North East Link, as well as going onto the busway. This is due to the lack of separation between these roadways that connect with or cross Thompsons Road.
The left turn off Bulleen Road from the north, going into Thompsons Road will be two lanes wide (historically it has only been a single lane). Then drivers will need to get into the correct lane for the Eastern Freeway, or the bus station or to continue along Thompsons Road. There is a high risk that drivers who wish to get to the Eastern Freeway (eastbound) will be in the wrong left turn lane off Bulleen Road. Remember that this left turn area on Bulleen Road will also have third lane - the one about to do a left hand 'U-turn' onto the North East Link ramp. As usual, I expect this project will try to overcome a poor road design with complicated direction signs.
The two most dangerous design elements are shown in the plan above:
The split right turn off Bulleen Road (coming north over the Eastern Freeway bridge) going to either the North East Link or Thompsons Road is bizarre. It is the sort of sub-standard, incompetent traffic design I would imagine encountering in some impoverished third world country where there were no skills in traffic design and no understanding of human factor in road design. But, to paraphrase the quote at the top of this web page, it was in fact developed by "some of the best engineers and designers from around the world." Imagine driving there and having to make a decision half way around a right turning movement: 'Do I go this way or that?' This will result in drivers hitting the splitter island or making the wrong decision and then trying to get out of where they do not want to be. The only way this might work is if drivers are lined up in separate lanes on the bridge over the Eastern Freeway for each separate destination (i.e. no split lanes) AND there are overhead lane destination signs over each lane at the start and end of the bridge. Given the shoddy efforts with direction signing so far (see the web page Take Me Home Thomb'ln Road'), it is quite possible the designers will try to get away with side mounted direction signs containing a multitude of arrows, because that is cheaper than overhead signs. Side mounted direction signs of this type will not work for this purpose. (An example of side mounted signs not working is eastbound in Olympic Boulevard, just before Punt Road, in Melbourne. The signs there (and westbound also) should have been overhead ones with an arrow and destination over each lane. See the following link). https://www.google.com.au/maps/@-37.824283,144.9874342,3a,75y,70.33h,86.16t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1svKlsvRtjiE473Z-2TMMGeQ!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fcb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile%26w%3D900%26h%3D600%26pitch%3D3.836845529526286%26panoid%3DvKlsvRtjiE473Z-2TMMGeQ%26yaw%3D70.33483707219806!7i16384!8i8192?coh=205410&entry=ttu
The right hand exit to Bulleen Road, off the freeway-to-freeway ramp linking the Eastern Freeway (from the west) to the North East Link. To see my letter to North East Link about this Bulleen Road Exit problem (in November 2019) - Click here. I have no information about how they propose to address this problem (because it's all secret).
The eastbound split of the Eastern Freeway into two separate carriageways soon after the split of the North East Link ramp to the north (see the above plan - the split is happening at the <<<< chevron markings, straight after the Bulleen Road bridge). There is a high risk of lane capacity imbalances here (resulting in congestion, side swipes and rear end collisions). Also, the advance signing for this split will be mixed up with the signing for the North East Link exit ramp; the result will be very complicated direction signs that unfamiliar drivers will struggle with. This increases the risk of hazardous, last minute lane swapping because drivers will not want to miss their exit. As an example of complicated 'carriageway split' advance direction signs, see the M1 Princes Freeway, citybound, approaching the M80 Western Ring Road and the M1 West Gate Freeway, installed in mid-2024.
Now consider the congestion issues:
The Original Alignments of
Bulleen Road and Thompsons Road
This is the original alignment of Bulleen Road and Thompsons Road - a simple T-junction.
The Layout of the Intersection, Once it Became
an Interchange on the Eastern Freeway
The end of Thompsons Road got deviated and the eastbound freeway entry ramp is off Thompsons Road. This is the layout that has existed from 1982 until 2024.
Freeway interchange layouts like this invariably have more congestion because of the more complicated layout of the roads and ramps, compared with a simple 'diamond interchange' where there is no extra road coming in at the same location (in this case Thompsons Road). The heavy volume of traffic coming along Thompsons Road and onto the westbound freeway conflicts with (a) the major right turn exit from the east, and (b) right turns from the south on Bulleen Road, going to the eastbound freeway entry ramp. The freeway bridge had to be widened to help cope.
If the North East Link ramps were built near Manningham Road (at Greenaway Street) and not here, this general layout would have remained here permanently.
The Layout Adopted in 2021 and Currently Being Built, With the N.E. Link Ramps Located at Thompsons Road, Instead of Near Manningham Road
Here is what is planned to happen and will soon be built, unless these new Thompsons Road northerly ramps are abandoned and the originally proposed northerly ramps are built near Manningham Road.
This is going to be a severely congested set of intersections. The design will attract more traffic to use Thompsons Road and then turn on and off Thompsons Road here. With so many signal-controlled intersections along such a short length of Thompsons Road, it will be impossible to achieve reasonable traffic flows. There will be excessive delays and bad congestion. If the Bulleen Road bridge was adequately widened and Thompsons Road was widened through this area it may function better. But that is not proposed.
This bridge over the freeway is the only access the residents of Bulleen have, to and from the south.
This will become a road safety blackspot and a traffic congestion hotspot
North East Link proclaimed in 2022 that having the northerly NEL ramps here at Thompsons Road will ‘remove 14,700 vehicles a day from Bulleen Road’. Hallelujah!
They do not mention the increased traffic on Thompsons Road.
They do not mention that Bulleen Road in Bulleen is quite capable of taking that 14,700 vehicles a day, as it is a divided road with no frontage houses or driveways, whereas Thompsons Road is all housing and frequent driveways.
Nor do they mention that getting traffic to go straight north or south across the freeway bridge is a lot easier and quicker to achieve than having complicated, busy turns between Bulleen Road and Thompsons Road and the new complicated ramps here. By comparison, the ramps at Greenaway Street (near Manningham Road) were proposed to enter Bulleen Road at a simple T junction.
Traffic Models are NOT reality - they are just predictions or best guesstimates
The other big thing that North East Link does not mention is that all the traffic predictions (to show that the design will work) are just predictions. The models that were used to make these predictions are ancient and limited in their ability to replicate the real world. The volumes that will occur are essentially anyone's guess. We have already seen this problem at EastLink in Ringwood, where the traffic volumes (in both directions) between EastLink to the south and the Ringwood Bypass to the east are much greater than predicted by their traffic models. As a result, the ramps there cannot cope with all the traffic (not enough capacity and too many conflicts) and there are long delays during every weekday peak period. In Sydney, the recently opened Rozelle tollway interchange has resulted in severe congestion for local people, all because the traffic prediction models got it so wrong.
We can look forward to similar problems around Bulleen Road / Thompsons Road once North East link opens, because North East Link has chosen to connect its tollway ramps into a point on the arterial road network that is already complicated and is most at risk of severe disruption if the traffic predictions are only slightly wrong (i.e. Thompsons Road at the Bulleen Road interchange with the M3 Eastern Freeway). In reality North East Link (MRPV) and its consultants do not have any robust idea about how much traffic there will be and in what directions it will arrive on the surface arterial road network in this area and nearby.
One More Design Failure: Ignoring Flooding on Bulleen Road
Bulleen Road in Bulleen is a divided road. Between Thompsons Road and the Trinity playing fields it cross a flood plain of the Yarra River. The original (now southbound) carriageway was built lower than the later northbound carriageway. From time to time the southbound carriageway floods. This happened twice in 2022.
Bulleen Road, Bulleen looking south during the flood in October 2022. The Trinity entrance is on the left
In an email to me in late 2024 North East Link confirmed that the section of the southbound carriageway of Bulleen Road outside the Trinity playing fields will NOT be raised above the flood levels. So in the photo below, the area where the nearest six vehicles are will continue to be flooded from time to time, even though the section beyond there will be raised.
Bulleen Road, Bulleen looking south in November 2024. The Trinity entrance is on the left, at the Give Way sign after the hairpin bend sign. The area where the six nearest vehicles are will not be raised as part of the North East Link project and will continue to be closed from time to time when it floods.
The email from North East Link (20 Dec. 2024) advised that "the existing road pavement is maintained north of Trinity access road on Bulleen Road. Recognising the flood history of this area, works on Bulleen Road will improve the flood resilience of this area overall, due to new drainage and higher road levels south of Trinity access road."
I conclude that this is comms-talk for 'the southbound carriageway will not be raised'. But somehow raising the section that is further south (which will reduce the area over which flood waters can spread) will magically "improve the flood resilience of this area" (whatever that means). I am yet to understand how "new drainage" will avoid the road being flooded when the nearby Yarra River is at a flood level and this section of road is at a lower level. Perhaps the water will magically flow uphill in the new drainage and into the flooded river?
“Some of the best engineers, designers and builders from across Australia and around the world
have worked for years to refine the design of North East Link to ensure it delivers
the best outcome for the whole community.”
Duncan Elliott, Chief Executive of the North East Link project
Sunday Herald Sun, pg 30, 12 February 2023
The Reasons for this Imminent Disaster in Bulleen
The immediate reasons for this bargain basement treatment of Bulleen lie in a different electorate. A freeway reservation has been in place beside Greensborough Road in Macleod for decades. The original North East Link design used this reservation, putting the freeway out of the way in a deep cutting. But in 2021 this section was suddenly put in a 1.9 km longer tunnel, costing over $2 billion more, to keep some vocal residents in Macleod happy. What a gross misuse of public funds (or private funds that the public will have to repay). To cut overall project costs, major changes were made in Bulleen, removing essential ramp connections at Manningham Road. North East Link and the government dressed this up as ‘A simplified Manningham Road interchange’. What they didn’t tell the public or the councils was that it was being replaced by a very complicated and dangerous interchange at Thompsons Road. There was no opportunity for public comment or independent technical review.
Some parts of North East Link’s new design in Bulleen are very dangerous. Others are just penny-pinching, like not extending the bicycle lanes on Bulleen Road or providing a safe service road outside the Bulleen Road shops.
The root cause of these cost and road safety problems with North East Link lies in earlier political decisions by the current state Labor government. Through their political actions they placed 'road builders' in decision making positions about road projects, big and small. Lovely people though most of them are, 'road builders' are trained to build roads. They are not traffic engineers and they are not road safety engineers. They are not trained to design roads for the safety and amenity of road users. They are certainly not trained in road safety engineering - and in my experience they care little about 'minor' project elements like signs and lines, that are critical for unfamiliar drivers. Thinking thoroughly about those types of issues appears (from my observations) to simply gets in the way of getting roads built, for most of them. As a result, they do not have the skills to recognise sub-standard road design consultants - who themselves do not have the required road safety engineering skills to produce safe designs.
These are the people this government has put in charge of deciding on designs for state road projects. How did this happen? This government has had the long term political goal of dismantling VicRoads. It achieved this in 2019. Along the way, the hollowing out of VicRoads by government has resulted in a wealth of road safety and traffic expertise being lost. Then the government decided to split off the road builders from the rest of VicRoads and rebadge them as Major Road Projects Victoria (MRPV). MRPV has now been amalgamated with North East Link. The rest of VicRoads has been sliced and diced (reduced) even further into the Department of Transport and Planning.
Victoria’s deadly road safety history in the 1950s and 60s tells us of the dangers in having a state road agency dominated by road builders. That is why RoSTA (the Road Safety and Traffic Authority) and then the RTA (the Road Traffic Authority) were established – and the road toll came down.
There is no such counterbalance these days. All that former road safety expertise within government is lost (and that is a big reason why the road toll is going up again). These days it’s all about getting that big road project built. Lazy governments do not like systems that produce alternative points of view. But that is essential for good government and good road design: road safety and congestion disasters like North East Link in Bulleen will continue to be created until the state government re-establishes a separate state road safety and traffic authority and gives it the powers, funding and resources needed for it to function effectively.
Other North East Link Design Problems in Bulleen That Need to be Fixed
The other design problems that need to be fixed - and which would cost little extra on top of the $26 billion budget - are contained in the following documents:
Rob Morgan's Advice to North East Link on Design problems, May 2022 - Click here.
Rob Morgan's letter to the Minister for Transport Infrastructure, February 2024 - Click here. He took over six months to respond
(See 'Danny Delays Doing . . .' on the web page 'Complete disinterest . . . ).
They include:
The lack of a service road for the shops on the east side of Bulleen Road, just south of Manningham Road (actually between Noelle Street and Austin Street). Poor amenity and safety issues could so easily be overcome at virtually no extra cost.
Thoughtless design details along Bulleen Road (Thompsons Road to Manningham Road), including no completion of the bicycle lanes, lack of left turn deceleration lanes at most intersections, failure to link Ilma Court into Bulleen Road at the Golden Way signals, and no kerbed median opposite the shops.
Failure to deal with issues on Thompsons Road resulting from the likely increase in traffic ('Outside the scope of the project'). see Future Issues Being Ignored.
Bulleen Road at Ilma Court / Golden Way
Ilma Court needs to be connected into Bulleen Road at the Golden Way signals, now that North East Link has torn down the houses that prevented this happening earlier. This plan also shows the separate left turn lanes that need to be provided at every intersection along Bulleen Rd (to reduce the risk of nose-to-tail crashes).
NEL banners - paying lip service to the needs of traders at the Bulleen Road shops.
What the traders at the Bulleen Road shops need is a service road to separate the parking from the busy traffic lanes. That way, the amenity of the shops will be enhanced and shoppers will be attracted to the shops.
At the moment it is seriously hard work stopping at these shops.
Bulleen Road near Manningham Road
Plans for this area contain several needless, serious road safety hazards and ticking time-bombs.
Here are the actions that need to be taken for the safety of local road users, including cyclists and pedestrians.
This area of North East Link needs a complete redesign.
Road Safety Audits - an Opportunity to Tick a Box or to Genuinely Improve Road Safety?
What has been the response of the road builders at North East Link to this and other road safety design problems and suggested improvements? Often, it is:
"We've had the design road safety audited"
That box has been ticked.
As a Senior Road Safety Auditor myself (I was the principal author of the original Australian Road Safety Audit guidelines in 1994 - and again in 2002) I can say that any road safety audit is only as good as the road safety auditor team members who do it (i.e. their skills, experience and abilities), the scope of the audit, the price of the audit and the information that is provided for the auditors. There are numerous examples around the road network of deficient audits and deficient responses to audits by project engineers. For example see Signs Can't Fix Poor Designs and also Examples from the Oops! File on other pages on this website.
Who Designed These Hazardous Road Layouts in Bulleen?
The successful bidder for the Primary Package was the Spark consortium, or ‘the Spark North East Link Design & Construct Joint Venture’. This joint venture comprises several construction, commercial and other partners, with the primary construction partners being Webuild (an Italian construction firm, formerly Salini Impregilo), CPB Contractors (a CIMIC Group company – formerly Leighton Holdings. CIMIC is majority owned by German group Hochtief, which in turn is controlled by Spanish construction giant Grupo ACS), GS Engineering & Construction (a Korean-based construction firm), and China Construction Oceania (a subsidiary of China State Construction Engineering Corporation).
While they all provide glowing descriptions about themselves on their individual websites, it would appear that none of these organisations has been responsible for the road design for North East Link. An internet search establishes that the road and traffic design for the successful North East Link bid was carried out by another large engineering firm, SMEC.
SMEC’s origins are in hydroelectricity and tunnels. As the Snowy Mountains (hydroelectric) Scheme was in sight of completion, the Snowy Mountains Engineering Corporation was established to make use of the knowledge and skills developed on that 25-year long project. This entity became SMEC, a major engineering company that is involved in (amongst other things) transport, road and traffic projects, large and small in Australia and overseas. SMEC is now part of the Singapore-based Surbana Jurong Group. SMEC has over 5,000 employees in over 40 countries, according to its website.
A media release by SMEC on 16 November 2021, https://www.smec.com/media-release/smec-commences-north-east-link-detailed-design/ advises:
“SMEC has commenced work on the detailed design of Australia’s largest road project, North East Link” and
“SMEC, together with their joint venture partners Mott Macdonald, delivered the winning design for the Spark Consortium during the pandemic. The innovative design has now been announced by the Victorian Government and includes a longer tunnel to Watsonia, a new tree-lined boulevard for Greensborough Road and new, revived, and reconnected parklands which covers more area than 50 Melbourne Cricket Grounds.”
The statement also makes the claim that “North East Link is a once-in-a-generation project which will facilitate better connections for businesses, increase efficiencies for freight transport and make neighbourhoods in the north-eastern suburbs of Melbourne safer and more enjoyable places to live.”
SMEC CEO Australia & New Zealand, James Phillis is quoted as saying “SMEC has brought together a truly talented local team supplemented by internationally recognised specialists to support this successful tender.” and “We bring a wealth of experience in . . . major freeway design which will be invaluable to this project and its success.”
On another web page, https://www.smec.com/roads-highways-bridges/roads-highways/ SMEC advises “SMEC’s specialist teams manage all aspects of engineering and advisory for roads and highways” and “We draw on our extensive expertise in bridges, road alignment and pavement design, tunnelling and geotechnical engineering to provide advanced design and advisory solutions to complex road and highway challenges.” as well as “By leveraging technology including Digital Engineering, BIM and VR, we partner to develop innovative solutions that improve efficiency, safety and sustainability across complex projects.”
Amongst their listed ‘Specialist capabilities’ are
Intersection and interchange design,
Road concept and detailed design,
Road marking and signage design, and
Road Safety Assessments
It is impossible to equate this almost-breathless self-praise by SMEC with the decision to remove the North East Link’s northerly ramps from near Manningham Road (at Greenaway Street) and relocate them to Thompsons Road.
Their resulting ‘innovative solution’ at Thompsons Road includes the truly bizarre and dangerous split right turn off the Bulleen Road bridge. The lanes split in the middle of the intersection and drivers will have to instantly decide which way to go: to the tunnel or Thompsons Road. As an experienced road safety auditor, I have seen some fairly ordinary road and intersection designs over the years, but this is the worst example of shoddy traffic design I have ever seen. It cannot be fixed with more signs; unfamiliar drivers will not cope. There is another very dangerous layout next to the busway intersection (see the right hand image).
The bizarre and dangerous split right turn from the Bulleen Road bridge. Drivers turning right will have inadequate forward sight distance to the island at the split. "Do I follow the vehicle in front or . . . ?" Some will go the wrong way, then try to go the right way.
The inadequate separation between the busway (where it crosses Thompsons Road at grade), the entry ramp and the exit ramp - combined with the acute angle of the turn - means there is a high risk of wrong way movements by unfamiliar drivers (e.g. when there is no one to follow).
As I stated in my media release in October 2022, this interchange will be like one of those hair-raising roads you see in a third world country – complex road layouts, unreadable signs, drivers left to make last minute decisions, drivers going the wrong way, drivers crashing into each other, drivers hitting islands, and the area becoming an accident blackspot. SMEC works in Asia and Africa. The SMEC website shows one of their urban freeway projects in the Philippines: https://www.smec.com/project/nlex-harbor-link-segment-10/ There are some very ordinary interchange design elements clearly visible on that project, but nothing as bizarre and substandard as their designs for the Thompsons Road interchange.
To further illustrate how SMEC’s self-praise may be misplaced, here is another of their recent designs: at the end of an arterial road duplication elsewhere in Melbourne. My assessment of some of the design deficiencies is shown on the six photos that follow. The design plans have been seen, but are not shown here due to copyright. What got built is what the SMEC design plans (including the signing plan) showed. What you see is what they designed.
There are some very basis road design and traffic signing faults with this design, some of which have serious road safety implications. It is as if the designer was completely unaware of the Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices, AS 1742. This project is now exposing road users to needless – and completely avoidable – risk. The design plans had the names of four professionals on them: the drafter, designer, checker and authoriser; SMEC clearly has design and checking procedures in place. Yet the professionals who checked and authorised the traffic-related plans did not apply the necessary road safety engineering and traffic engineering skills that were needed in order to identify the obvious traffic design and signing errors that the designer and drafter made. Designed? Tick. Drafted? Tick. Checked? Tick. Authorised? Tick.
The message for the North East Link project is that if SMEC could make so many basic design mistakes on a relatively simple arterial road duplication project (well before the winning North East Link bid was selected), why was North East Link (now part of MRPV) not aware of this risk to their own project and not able to obtain effective road safety engineering scrutiny of SMEC's proposals?
There are three significant aspects about the road and traffic design process for North East Link that have resulted in the identified future hazardous traffic problems in Bulleen. Each of them is an organisational failure. In combination, they have resulted in a three-part system failure. When the crashes occur on the completed project, it will be possible to track their likelihood back to these three organizational failures:
Organisational Failure 1. The design changes made to the original Reference Design by the successful bidder were carried out by a major engineering consulting firm which believed it had the necessary resources and skills, but which did not have adequate traffic engineering and road safety engineering skills, and/or it did not recognise at a management level the importance of these skills (Organisational failure within the engineering consulting firm).
Organisational Failure 2. North East Link (now part of MRPV) did not have adequate technical skills to identify the traffic design deficiencies in the successful bidder’s proposals. They ‘didn’t know how much they didn’t know’. (Organisational failure within the North East Link project office).
Organisational Failure 3. There was no independent scrutiny of the new designs that were put forward by the successful bidder. Having not recognised their own technical skill limitations, the North East Link project office was unable to see even the reputational benefits (let alone the road safety benefits) of having the bidders’ design proposals independently scrutinized by people with the necessary traffic engineering and road safety engineering skills. (Organisational failure within the North East Link project office).
(There is also a fourth organizational failure, which centres around North East Link’s hubris once it was alerted to the road and traffic design problems in Bulleen by me and others, but that is discussed on my web page ‘Complete Disinterest . . .’)
North East Link Needs a Truly Independent Design Review in Bulleen
As per my October 2022 media release:
Because of North East Link’s refusal to discuss the road safety hazards documented in these web pages, I am calling for an urgent independent design review. There are dozens of design omissions and errors along Thompsons Road and Bulleen Road that I have identified. Many of them are simply amateurish, many affect pedestrians and cyclists. North East Link refuses to discuss them. To ensure the safety of the public, the only option is for the state government to set up a design review by a panel of independent road safety experts who understand how to design roads safely. This task cannot be done by the existing 'Independent Reviewer' of the project, as their role is far too restricted - and they are participants in the the current unsatisfactory processes.
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