SAY NO TO NORTH EAST LINK OPTION A!

The North East Link is a 16.5 billion dollars project that would connect the M80 ring road to the Eastern Freeway and widen the M3 to build Australia’s largest freeway, with over 20 lanes. It would create a major trucking route into our city, increasing congestion in downstream areas and locking us into a future of car dependency.

NELP seeks to promote car traffic as opposed to sustainable alternatives such light rail transport and would result in a projected increase of 95,000 vehicles per day, with associated rises in harmful air and noise pollution.

In Manningham alone, this project threatens 110 local businesses and nearly 1200 jobs. With the COVID debt expected to reach 60 billion by the end of the year, much needed investments in industries that generate ongoing employment such as schools, local businesses, public transport, and healthcare should take precedence over the outdated notion of promoting more car traffic.

Despite overcrowding of green spaces becoming increasingly problematic during the pandemic, NELP would destroy hundreds of hectares of parkland and tens of kilometres of walking tracks. It will also remove tens of thousands of established trees— a significant loss of the canopies that protect
our suburbs during heat waves. As COVID 19 has demonstrated that commuting could be made largely redundant, the focus of infrastructural upgrades should be on increasing the liveability of our suburbs, not on destroying parkland to create polluting super-highways.

Finally, NELP will obliterate both Banyule and Koonung creeks and damage tens hectares of sensitive habitats that have become critical to endangered native species in the aftermath of last summer's bushfires, making the project environmentally disastrous.

Join us in opposing the North East Link Project!