The biggest gig in town

摘要

The final touches are being put on the design of a 39km tollway that will link the eastern and southern suburbs of Melbourne. This cover story describes the project. few months ago, the biggest road infrastructure project in Australia was the $1.5 billion Westlink M7 in Sydney. Now the "biggest gig in town" is the $2.5 billion Mitcham Frankston Project (MFP), a north-south tollway to the east of the Melbourne CBD, linking the eastern and southeastern suburbs. It will stretch from the eastern end of the existing Eastern Freeway to the Frankston Freeway, some 40km south. The clock has just started ticking on a concession period of 39 years - four years to design and construct, followed by 35 years of operation - so the sooner the private consortium ConnectEast gets it built, the sooner it will start earning revenue. The project is structured in such a way that the government specifies the required outcomes, and then the private sector figures out how to meet them and spends its own money to make it happen. The private sector doesn't get paid until the project is built and generating revenue.