Bulldozing scores of homes on Punt Road to create a major highway could involve "the highly unacceptable loss" of parkland and open space on the Yarra riverfront, Melbourne City Council has told the Andrews government.

And a plan floated to redirect traffic into land adjacent to the Royal Botanic Gardens – onto "a recreational precinct of the highest value to the whole of metropolitan Melbourne" – is similarly misguided, the council says.

Punt Road. Credit:Darrian Traynor

VicRoads has put forward seven alternative plans for freeing up space on Melbourne's key north-south arterial road, two of which involve demolishing homes that for 61 years have had a public acquisition option on them.

Labor went to the last state election promising to review whether the acquisition overlay on the houses should be removed, because it "gives locals no control over the fate of their own homes".