A RAILWAY line to Doncaster could be built for $840 million and paid for using taxes raised from the higher property values it would generate, says a report.

The report, jointly written by transport experts from Curtin University in Western Australia, Melbourne's RMIT University, and global engineering firm Arup, has also found that the railway line could transport about 100,000 passengers a day if it was linked to the proposed Melbourne Metro rail tunnel, at an added cost of $300 million.

Illustration: Ron Tandberg.

This is the same number of vehicles projected to use the Baillieu government's proposed east-west road link daily, after it is built at an estimated cost of $5 billion to $9 billion. The report's authors have modelled their cost estimates for the proposed Doncaster railway on the highly successful Mandurah line in south-west Perth, a 70-kilometre railway that was built for $1.3 billion and opened in 2007.

A report co-author, Curtin University's Professor Peter Newman, was the architect of the Mandurah line. He is also on the board of federal advisory group Infrastructure Australia.