Your meant to count maintenance of the project as part of the costs. Operational costs are important.
Yeah well ultimately more people use Melbournes rail network and remember Melbourne already has the city loop as well.
For the whole cost of the project and the little benefits that it delievers, we could of instead added more tracks to the Merivale bridge and called it a day.
The messaging around CRR definitely could have been clearer around this, because then people reasonably end up arriving at this conclusion but the main issue that CRR is addressing isnât the Merivale bridge, itâs increasing the possible throughput of trains through the city by the addition of another track pair. On either side of the Merivale is a double track section. Even if you quad track the Merivale bride, that doesnât increase the total amount of trains the network can handle because all trains crossing the Merivale will still be forced to share the one track pair after the Merivale. You also donât get the other benefits such as the increased stabling capacity and Mayne reconfiguration enabling more efficient operations, new GC stations or the southern station rebuilds. The price tag is large and blown out from original estimates, however as seen above is unfortunately the norm for rail projects right now. Itâs good then that the project started when it did and not a moment later, lest the costs increased even further
I think itâs also important to remember that when weâre talking about a quoted figure for a project cost, context is really important. As in, the context of where and now that number is being quoted
It doesnât matter about reports and audits, the average person (ie voter) does not know anything about this stuff or care. The $19b number is being quoted in one-off sound bites, headlines, random other press releases, etc, and almost always itâs followed by âdue to blowouts under Labor" or some other such point.
To the average person, they donât know how that number is being calculated, they think âtunnel costs $19bn to build". And the LNP spokespeople who are quoting this stuff know that. Theyâve found a fancy way to get away with saying a higher cost. Theyâre doing it on purpose to mislead it and I feel like a lot of people, especially you @Metro are choosing to ignore that just to be pedantic about numbers from some report no one reads.
The $19bn figure is a political potshot and nothing more, as they didnât NEED to include all that extra stuff.
On the flipside, Labor running around for years and years, continuing to say â$5.4bnâ any chance they could was equally misleading and we knew that at the time as well. That was an equally political move as they kept adding the tagline âon time and on budget", despite numerous reports to the contrary of industrial action and inflating materials costs. So that was an equally misleading number to keep quoting to the public.
Tldr politicians will use whatever tricky math they want to, in order to fit their narrative and score points with the general public.
I think beyond that we can agree, actual project cost is about $12bn
Well, how about we just graph the numbers we have then - What do we see?
- Red team estimates are clustering at the very bottom
- Blue team estimates are at the very top
- Comparison with similar projects in Melbourne, Auckland and Sydney suggest a value between $10-15 billion.
The QAO Figure of about $12.4 billion seems consistent with Melbourne, Sydney and Auckland Projects, although a bit on the low side.
Given that there is another four years for the project to run, there does seem to be some possibility of another cost increase of around + $1b between now and 2029. This would bring the CRR cost closer to the Auckland Estimate, which is also a narrow gauge railway with the same electification.
Notes - Raw Data
| CRR Cost Estimates | AUD $billion |
|---|---|
| Bligh Govât (2010) | 5.4 |
| Palaszczuk Govât (2023) | 6.3 |
| CRRDA Budget | 8.0 |
| Based on Sydney Metro | 10.2 |
| QAO Core Project Figure | 12.4 |
| Based on Auckland CRL (NZ) | 13.25 |
| Based on Melbourne Metro | 15.1 |
| Crisafulli Govât Media Release | 19 |
Your point?
You managed to say the exact same thing again, now with graphs. Completely ignored my point about politicisation of the reporting of numbers. Good chat!
It actually supports your points, and clarifies where we should expect the actual cost to be around.
The $19bn figure is a political potshot and nothing more, as they didnât NEED to include all that extra stuff.
On the flipside, Labor running around for years and years, continuing to say â$5.4bnâ any chance they could was equally misleading and we knew that at the time as well. That was an equally political move as they kept adding the tagline âon time and on budget", despite numerous reports to the contrary of industrial action and inflating materials costs. So that was an equally misleading number to keep quoting to the public.
All these unread messages in the thread really had me hopeful for an early launch date of CRR 
I think youâre spot on here - both of these are technically accurate numbers, but whichever team in power at the time is playing political games to make them lower/higher. Probably a good reminder for us that infrastructure is a political chip and itâs worth being a bit suspicious of costings, especially for mega-projects like this
How about that security breach where youths got in the tunnels and let off flares and also damaged equipment. 
QLD
Police investigate after masked youths infiltrate Cross River Rail project