With the Andrews government now promising to build the North East Link, we should cast our minds back to a seemingly unrelated event on March 29, 2011.



That's the day the Baillieu government officially acted to remove a bus lane from Stud Road in Rowville.



The bus lane had been in place all of 18 months. It was installed by the previous government as a "public transport dividend" from construction of EastLink. As EastLink relieved pressure on parallel roads, it was proclaimed, space could be "rebalanced" toward buses, demonstrating how motorways and public transport fulfil "complementary" roles.



This "complementarity" was a supremely convenient idea politically, but had no basis in reality. There's no shortage of evidence why. Quite simply, new roads have never been found to relieve congestion – usually they've added to it.



The British recognised this at policy level years before, after witnessing the traffic nightmare bequeathed to them by Thatcher's road-building frenzy in the 1980s. In 1994, their Standing Advisory Committee on trunk road assessment ruled that "increases in traffic on improved roads are, in general, not offset by equivalent reductions in traffic on unimproved alternative routes".



As long as our transport policy favours roads, in other words, that bus lane in Stud Road was doomed from the outset – as was any hope of congestion relief for the bulk of eastern suburbs motorists. EastLink was never going to take cars or trucks off Stud Road or any other road. The press release cheering the removal of the bus lane can still be found on the website of the federal MP for Aston, Alan Tudge. The accompanying photo shows Mr Tudge on Stud Road complete with passing semi-trailer – one of the trucks it was promised EastLink would take off Stud Road for good.



Why dredge up all this history now? Because EastLink's northern extension now has official government backing, and all the same delusions about congestion relief, freight diversion and "complementary" benefits for public transport are being marshalled in its defence. We are failing to learn from history.



It's not hard to understand how the North East Link can seem so attractive if your mindset is business-as-usual. Many years ago, it was bundled with EastLink's predecessor as a single project: the Eastern Ring Road. It aimed to provide Melbourne with a complete ring-freeway just like the M25 in London (now a congested monster widely known as "Europe's biggest car park").



But for a long time, politicians and planners were keen to deny the project we now know as the North East Link ever existed. That's because it posed and still poses a threat to parkland, wetlands and places of historical and cultural significance in the Yarra Valley green wedge. Assessing the Eastern Ring Road as a single project may have seen it ruled out on environmental grounds. So the road lobby fell back to salami tactics: build the less contentious southern part first, then let pressure build up until the northern part appears inevitable.



And so now, in the face of all evidence, the government and Infrastructure Victoria claim the North East Link as the ultimate congestion buster. It's claimed to remove cars and trucks not just from parallel routes like Rosanna Road, but also from CityLink and the Tullamarine Freeway. Apparently, this will allow lanes for expanded SkyBus services, meaning that a rail link to the airport can be shoved down the priority list. On past history, I'd give those bus lanes 18 months.



But what is the alternative? When we're at this scale, it has to include extending our rail network for both passengers and freight, because only rail provides the combination of speed and high-capacity to compete with cars and trucks on a region-wide basis, and to support bus networks for efficient local transport. This is the only way we'll have a chance of accommodating a growing population without adding to congestion.



It also clearly won't happen without culture change in government. Rail extensions to Rowville and Doncaster remain politically dead because the only body capable of supporting a credible business case – the Victorian Department of Transport – is dead against them. When calls for Doncaster rail are answered with a route that avoids the main regional activity centre to terminate at a car park, you know the road lobby is winning by default.



Time will tell whether the new Transport for Victoria body moves us in the right direction. But without major reform, it's clear we'll continue to be subjected to more person-years' worth of effort, using flawed computer models with question-begging assumptions, promoting motorway "solutions" that on prior experience just don't work.

Tony Morton is president of the Public Transport Users' Association.