MELBOURNE METRO RAIL PROJECT EES INQUIRY AND ADVISORY COMMITTEE

SUBMISSIONS FOR

CITYWIDE SERVICE SOLUTIONS PTY LTD

Introduction

1. These submissions are made for Citywide Service Solutions Pty Ltd

(“Citywide”), a submitter to the Melbourne Metro Rail Project – EES Inquiry

and Advisory Committee Panel.

2. Citywide is a major Australian physical services company, providing integrated

civil infrastructure, environmental and open space services in Victoria, New

South Wales, the ACT, and Queensland.

3. Citywide’s head office is located at 294 Arden Street, North Melbourne. It has

three depots in the immediate area at 85 Green Street, 54 Green Street and

22 Henderson Street.

4. As part of the Melbourne Metro Rail Project (“the Project”), Arden Station is

proposed to be constructed to the south of Arden Street, on Laurens Street,

within a short distance of the Citywide sites.

5. Whilst Citywide is generally supportive of the improvement that the Project will

make to the transport needs of Melbourne, it is concerned with the potential

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impacts to its business operations during the construction of Arden Station and

following delivery of the project during the legacy state.

Citywide’s Business Operations

6. Established in 1995, Citywide is a wholly owned subsidiary of the City of

Melbourne employing more than 1,050 people nationally. Citywide provides

civil infrastructure services including asphalt laying, maintenance and repair,

pavement line marking, traffic management, management of storm water

drainage assets, installation and maintenance of furniture in parks and open

spaces as well as roadside furniture and signs. It provides environmental

services, such as waste collection, management and recycling, waste transfer

and street cleaning. Citywide also provides open space services including

maintenance of parks and sports grounds, trees, and landscape construction.

7. In providing these services, Citywide has over 300 personnel based at the

North Melbourne premises as follows:

294 Arden Street: head office functions; 69 staff;

85 Green Street: street sweeping; waste collection for the City of

Melbourne and City of Moreland; parking meter collections; workshop;

120 staff;

54 Green Street: asphalt; civil services; commercial services; health,

safety and environment infrastructure; operations support; open space

for the City of Port Phillip; reinstatements; routine infrastructure

maintenance; traffic and events; 87 staff;

22 Henderson Street: open space, City of Melbourne trees; City of

Brimbank trees; infrastructure; 38 staff.

8. Citywide has over 500 vehicles in its fleet Victoria-wide. 188 vehicles are

housed at the North Melbourne depots including garbage trucks, dump trucks,

utility vehicles, and small, medium and heavy rigid vehicles.

9. Vehicle access points are spread over a number of crossovers on Arden,

Green, Henderson and Fogarty Streets. These are shown in the witness

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statement of John Kiriakidis at Figure 4.2 (and updated in Mr Kiriakidis’s

addendum statement circulated on 22 August 2016).

10. A large number of Citywide staff rely on private motor vehicle travel to and

from work, which generates a demand for approximately 200 car parking

spaces (with around 120 of these provided on street). Demand for long term

car parking in the area immediately surrounding the Citywide sites is very high.

11. It is estimated that the traffic generated by staff equates to more than 600

vehicle movements per day, with staff and fleet movements estimated at

around 250,000 trips annually.

12. The Citywide fleet relies heavily on Arden Street and Macaulay Road. These

provide principal access paths for their various trips.

13. A key component of Citywide’s operations is its role as an emergency service

provider to the City of Melbourne. The City of Melbourne’s Governance

Protocols for Wholly Owned Subsidiaries (such as Citywide) provides:

“… The Council’s primary emergency management response is

provided by Citywide through the Infrastructure Services Contract. In

addition, Citywide can provide emergency callout resources to other

Council service contracts (i.e. street cleaning, waste management and

tree maintenance).”

14. Under its arrangement with the City of Melbourne, Citywide is required to be on

standby to respond to any risk to public safety at any time day or night

throughout the whole year. Citywide is required to respond urgently to

emergency situations to quickly isolate and rectify hazardous and unsafe

conditions.

15. A key concern for Citywide in this process is that the Project will impede its

ability to respond to emergency situations, with a consequent risk to the

community, as well as to its business.

16. An example of the emergency response operation is the Labour Day weekend

in March 2010. An intense storm with large hail stones smashed through

Melbourne and the CBD, throwing the road and public transport networks into

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chaos, causing significant damage to vehicles and property, and flooding many

buildings. Water cascaded through CBD streets.

17. Citywide quickly mobilized its resources with emergency response crews

clearing roads and tram tracks of debris to allow emergency service access

and public transport to recommence operations in order to get stranded

commuters home. Other crews dealt with dangerous flooding in Kings Way at

Flinders Street and at the corner of Dudley Street and Wurundjeri Way through

clearing blocked drains. All-night crews were deployed at Southbank

Promenade and Northbank to clear massive amounts of debris where the

Yarra had overflowed. Management and staff worked 14 hour shifts through

the weekend and into the following Tuesday morning attending to storm

damage.

Intersection of Flinders and Spencer Streets

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Flinders Street (near corner of Flinders Street and Downie Street)

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Concerns

Traffic and on-street car parking

18. The EES notes an anticipated 421 workers will service the Arden Precinct

throughout the construction phase of the Project (the largest workforce at any

of the precinct locations). Approximately 260 truck trips are predicted per day

from the construction site, with a peak of up to 360 trips per day. The Project

in this location is expected to be a ‘24/7’ operation for four years.

19. There is a lack of detail provided as to the anticipated impacts on pedestrian

and vehicular traffic and car parking in the Arden precinct, as well as in relation

to the types and numbers of vehicles that will be used and the times of peak

movements.

20. Sean Smedley (traffic and transport expert for the Authority) appears to have

assumed that Project traffic will replace an equivalent level of traffic presently

generated by the occupiers of the Project site. No assessment has been

produced by the Authority or Mr Smedley as to the present levels of vehicular

traffic generated by the site.

21. Further, the EES has not considered construction worker traffic in assessing

the impacts of the Project on the immediate precinct.

22. Parking in the area immediately surrounding the Citywide sites is already at

capacity. With the Project intending to operate on an around the clock

schedule, there will undoubtedly be consequences to current users of the road

network.

23. At the traffic and transport expert witness conclave, the traffic engineers

recognised the disruption likely to arise from construction worker parking, and

agreed to modify EPR T1 as follows, at item 5:

“Construction workers must not park on-street. Provision of sufficient

off-street car parking, or alternative parking arrangements (including

consideration of satellite parking sites with dedicated shuttle services)

must be provided.”

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24. The Authority’s proposed change, following the conclave, is to require

provision of car parking for construction workers where practicable. This

leaves to some later negotiation or consideration as to whether off-street

parking, or some other measure, might be provided. It allows the prospect that

no measures will be introduced to alleviate the inevitable impacts of large

numbers of workers driving to the construction site. It is not satisfactory. The

prospective outcome is severe disruption to the existing work force.

25. Citywide is also concerned that key vehicular routes (used by Citywide’s fleet

and staff) will become heavily congested, or at times closed, as a result of the

Project.

26. At present, there is substantial queuing on Arden Street and Macaulay Road in

the morning and afternoon peaks. The impact of the anticipated residential

and jobs growth (as a result of development under the Arden-Macaulay

Structure Plan) and the Project’s construction and workforce traffic will likely

result in significant additional pressure on the immediate road network. That

will be exacerbated by the closing of Laurens Street during construction.

27. These matters should be modelled now to assess the level of impact and

determine measures to address those impacts. Without this information and

analysis, the Committee is not able to assess the potential magnitude,

likelihood and significance of adverse environmental effects of the Project, or

the adequacy or appropriateness of the proposed environmental management

framework.

28. A further concern of Citywide is the prospect of Project construction traffic

using the local streets, being Fogarty Street, Langford Street and Gracie

Street, as short cuts or as a ‘rat run’ to avoid key intersections.

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29. Fogarty Street is a central conduit to Citywide operations and is regularly used

by waste trucks and the infrastructure fleet. The use of this and the other local

streets by construction traffic and construction worker traffic has the potential

to cause significant disruptions to Citywide’s fleet movements and in turn may

impact on Citywide’s ability to meet its customer service requirements.

30. At the traffic and transport conclave, the experts agreed, at item 3, that EPR

T1 should be amended by including a requirement that:

Local roads should be avoided where possible and should not be used

as an alternative to arterial roads.

31. Some of the experts (but not Mr Smedley for the authority) proposed the

naming of local streets. Mr Kiriakidis proposed naming Fogarty Street,

Langford Street and Gracie Street.

32. In response to this agreement and views, the Authority’s version 2 of the EPRs

proposes minimizing the use of local streets where practicable. This avoids a

requirement to use arterial roads and the strong discouragement to use local

roads. It allows the prospect that the use of local streets will be regarded as a

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practicable choice. Given the alignments of Macaulay Road and Arden Street,

it can readily be imagined that use of Fogarty Street might be regarded a

practical alternative to avoid the Arden Street/Macaulay Road/Dryburgh Street

intersection. As they stand, the EPRs do not implement the construction traffic

routes as identified in the EES, nor do they sufficiently discourage the use of

local streets.

33. Citywide submits that clear mandatory wording must be included in the EPRs

to ensure that acceptable outcomes are provided. Otherwise, the potential

outcome may be something quite different to that considered by the

Committee.

34. In summary, the EES material contains a meaningful absence of detail

regarding the existing conditions, network performance, parking conditions and

the management of traffic and parking activities associated with the

construction of Arden Station.

35. There is also a complete lack of recognition in the EES material of the Arden-

Macaulay Structure Plan, which Citywide considers critically important in this

area which is set to undergo significant transition and growth. For these

reasons, Citywide has serious concerns (and an inability to appreciate or

mitigate against these concerns) as to the traffic, parking and pedestrian

impacts from the Project.

36. The Project has the potential to significantly affect Citywide’s operations, with

the risk of significant constraints on its ability to service the community and

loss to its business.

Electrical Substation

37. The design currently proposed for the Project indicates that an electrical

substation may be located on Langford Street, to the east of the Citywide sites.

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38. Little to no information has been provided in respect to this significant

infrastructure item. The impacts to Citywide, the surrounding network, and the

Arden precinct generally, are unknown.

39. Further information is required in relation to the timing, duration and road

network impacts arising from construction of the substation, should it proceed

on this site. An assessment is required of any loss of on-street car parking and

road closures.

Legacy Arrangements

40. The traffic engineers agreed at the traffic and transport conclave that a car

parking strategy for the Arden Station Precinct should be prepared (see item

18).

41. Mr Kiriakidis and Mr Coath proposed, at item 19, a review of traffic and

transport impacts arising from the new pedestrian signals to be installed on

Laurens Street, with the prospect of adverse outcomes for the Laurens

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Street/Arden Street intersection and the Arden Street/Macaulay

Road/Dryburgh Street intersection. Mr Smedley did not agree. The EPRs

have not been amended to address the issue.

42. Laurens Street presently carries significant through traffic; most likely avoiding

the Arden Street/Macaulay Road/Dryburgh Street intersection. The Project will

change the road network with these new pedestrian signals. With existing

queuing at the key intersection, there is the likely prospect that its performance

will be adversely affected. This is an issue that warrants specific attention

under the EPRs.

Conclusion

43. Citywide’s diverse capabilities and inner-urban location enable it to respond

safely, quickly and effectively to a range of infrastructure challenges and

emergencies. The Project has the prospect of adversely affecting vehicle

movements to and from the Citywide sites. This may cause a substantial

disruption to the Citywide business with ramifications for the business itself as

well as the community. Citywide has a key stakeholder interest in ensuring

that the Project controls, principally the EPRs, incorporate an appropriate level

of direction to ensure that Citywide’s concerns are addressed.

44. It is submitted that, in order for the Committee to be properly informed, further

assessment and modelling is required to address the impact of construction

traffic. This should be conducted having regard to the estimated increase in

residential population and growth under the new structure plan.

45. It is submitted that the EPRs should be amended (using targeted, clear and

mandatory wording) to include the following:-

Project construction workers must not drive to the construction site.

Parking must be provided off-site;

The current and future operations of Citywide be considered in the

preparation of transport management plans for the Arden Precinct with

a key objective being to protect Citywide from any potential adverse

impacts of the Project;

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Citywide be consulted as a key stakeholder in the development and

preparation of a Traffic Management Plan for the Arden Precinct;

Any anticipated road closures in the Arden Precinct as a result of the

Project (which closure is expected to last for a period of two days or

less) be advised to Citywide at least 21 days in advance of the closure;

and

Any anticipated road closures in the Arden precinct as a result of the

Project (which closure is expected to last for a period of three days or

greater) be advised to Citywide at least 6 weeks in advance of the

closure.

46. Citywide submits that these requirements are necessary to provide an

appropriate level of assurance that its business operations are protected from

inappropriate impacts.

Dated 19 September 2016

……………………………………….. Planning and Property Partners Lawyers for Citywide Service Solutions Pty Ltd