Airport Link expenditure to hit $250,000 an hour

Expenditure on Brisbanes newly started Airport Link project, will have to be up around $160m a month or close to $250,000 an hour at peak, accordng to Melbourne based Southern and Eastern Integrated Transport Authority CEO Ken Mathers.
Speaking at the Victorian Transport Infrastructure summit in mid November, Mathers said Melbournes Eastlink which SEITA delivered, was for six months costing $100m a month to build. But it opened five months ahead of schedule which was remarkably early, he said.
Airport Link, at $3.4bn is now Australias biggest road project. The combined roads and busway solution will comprise two tunnels and a new airport connection.
The project between Bowen Hills and Brisbane Airport, will feature a 6.7km mainly underground road, a 3km busway, a 750m flyover bridge and a fast-diamond intersection to fix the gridlock at the existing airport roundabout.
Premier Anna Bligh signalled the official Airport Link start on November 13 with a sod turning ceremony at Kedron.
This will be a mostly underground toll road linking two of South East Queenslands most important economic centres, the airport and the city. Together with the Northern Busway (Windsor to Kedron) and Airport Roundabout Upgrade projects, Airport Link will free up the northern road network.
Not only will they make a real difference to our traffic, these projects will provide more than 10,000 jobs, including about 6500 skilled jobs, 1250 staff jobs and a large number of supplier opportunities. Airport Link will strengthen Queenslands job market and allow our people to develop their careers and skills for the next four years right here in Brisbane, Bligh said.
From that starting moment until mid 2012, expenditure would have to average more than $100,000 an hour, to see the project on track.
Deputy Premier and Minister for Infrastructure Paul Lucas, said 2.8 million m of earth will be excavated and 831,000m of concrete poured. Two Herrenknecht tunnel boring machines worth $90m will arrive in Bruisbane towards the end of next year and start work about mid 2010. (Earthmover, September 2008). Each TBM is a bit longer than the field at Suncorp Stadium.
SEITAs opposite number in Queenland, City North Infrastructure Pty Ltd or CNI, of which Mathers is a board member, expects these machines will help it complete work on all three projects by mid 2012, six months ahead of the state governments original plans.
The public transport benefits will be huge, with the Northern Busway able to cater for 47,000 bus passenger trips per day by 2016, five times higher than on the existing road network. One million new plants and 5400 new trees will be planted, including more than 3.5ha of new parkland, and creeks throughout will be rehabilitated and their banks returned to a more natural state. Also there will be cycle and pedestrian pathways throughout the project corridor.
Due to the skills shortage, Thiess John Holland project director Gordon Ralph, said the company would launch a nation-wide recruitment campaign to expand its new team.
We currently have a 600-strong team of design and construction professionals on board ready to start construction. Within the next six months alone, TJH will create more than 750 new positions.
Our project team has been growing at a rapid rate twenty new staff every week since July. However, job opportunities will continue to rise for the next 18 months and throughout the life of the projects, Ralph said.
According to The Age newspaper in late November, the Airport Link is now a $4.8bn project. It said investors who had paid $1 for shares in the project in June, were far from happy because they were now worth just 0.1c. To keep the shares, shareholders must pay another $2 in the next 18 months, to keep them.