The decision to cut down 70 trees lining St Kilda Road in Melbourne to make way for a new train station is “an absolute tragedy”, opponents have said.

The trees range in age from elms planted in the late 19th century to London Plane trees planted in the 1960s.

They will be removed from the heritage-listed St Kilda Road corridor and the northern half of the Albert Road Reserve to make way for the construction of the new Domain underground train station, if an application to Heritage Victoria by the Cross Yarra Partnership consortium is approved.

Domain is one of five new underground stations to be built as part of the $11bn Melbourne metro tunnel project, which will run beneath the city from Kensington to South Yarra connecting the Sunbury and Pakenham/Cranbourne rail lines.

A number of heritage-listed trees have already been removed as part of the early construction works, and the application to Heritage Victoria lists an additional 56 trees lining St Kilda Road between Dorcas Street and Kings Way to make way for the realignment of the road and train lines.

The application also lists the removal of 13 trees from Albert Park Reserve. The trees at the neighbouring Shrine of Remembrance would not be removed, the application said, but two would have to be trimmed.

Marilyn Wane, convener of residents group Save St Kilda Road, said lopping down the trees was “a dreadful tragedy”.

“It’s an absolute tragedy that it has come to this when there were several viable alternatives that they could have done,” Wane told Guardian Australia.

Alternatives included putting the station in nearby Park Street or digging a deeper tunnel, rather than building the station using a less expensive cut-and-cover method, she said.

“It’s just very sad that it has to happen this way,” Wane said. “There’s going to be a huge scar on the boulevard for 30 years.”

Save St Kilda Road lodged an objection to the heritage application requesting the removed trees be replaced like-for-like with large mature trees, and that green space and grass verges be maintained.

Wane said removing the trees would affect the local climate because the avenue of elms provided extensive shade cover and filtered traffic fumes and noise.

“Everyone who lives around there is going to suffer for the next 20 years because the causeway does more than just change the climate of the area,” she said. “It’s also gobbling up all the pollution from the cars, it keeps the dust down.”

The oldest elms along the 4km St Kilda Road corridor, which runs past the National Gallery of Victoria, the King’s Domain, the Royal Botanic Gardens and the Shrine of Remembrance, were planted in the 1860s.

The federal government granted emergency national heritage listing to St Kilda Road and surrounds in February, in an effort to prevent the Victorian government removing up to 100 trees.

That listing is still subject to assessment and has to be confirmed by February.

The federal environment minister, Josh Frydenberg, said at the time that he had written to the Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, asking him to consider redesigning the project to reduce its impact on the “historically important 19th century boulevard”.

The federal government had backed the proposed East-West link cross city road tunnel, which was spiked by the Andrews government in favour of the Metro rail tunnel.

The heritage application from the Cross Yarra Partnership says the original environmental assessments earmarked up to 223 trees for removal and that the final plans had minimised the impact of construction.