Fifty-Six Years and Counting: Why Melbourne Still Can't Catch a Train to Its Airport

On the face of it, my website is about International Trade – the movement of goods. But in order to move goods nationally or internationally, traders and others need to travel, so my interest is also in logistics, which also concerns itself with the movement of people. Hence this latest “bee in my bonnet”.

It is prompted from a recent experience in which I had to bury my wonderful brother, who lived (and died) in Bendigo. Bendigo is two and a half hours north of Tullamarine. A nice city, but very much out of the way. Happily, my son, who lives in Melbourne, met me at the airport, thereby avoiding my having to go back into Melbourne and start over. If I had, my brother would have passed before I made it to Bendigo. We were lucky.

On 1 July 1970, Prime Minister John Gorton opened Melbourne's new international airport at Tullamarine. Domestic flights moved across from Essendon a year later. The airport came with a freeway, a vast car park and, even then, talk of a railway.

Fifty-six years on, Melbourne Airport handled more than 36 million passengers in 2025. It is the country's second-busiest airport and one of its few without a curfew. It is still reached by car, taxi, rideshare or the Skybus. Sydney has had an airport train since 2000, Brisbane since 2001 and Perth since 2022. The first train to Tullamarine is now scheduled for 2033 — sixty-three years after the first flight.

A city of more than five million people does not end up here by accident. We could ask ourselves – how many international airports around the world do not have a public transport system that connects the major city? My guess is ..“not many”.

A Railway Everyone Wanted and Nobody Built

The idea is older than the airport. In 1958 the City Development Association was already proposing a public transport link. Trans Australia Airlines wanted a direct tunnel to the city; Reg Ansett preferred helicopters and freeways.

Ansett's view won the decade.

In 1965 a bill to build a line from Glenroy reached Parliament and lapsed in the Upper House. In the early 1970s a French hovertrain was seriously studied, until the French government withdrew its backing.

Later governments kept the idea alive without ever paying for it. The Kennett government reserved land. The Bracks government investigated a link in 2001 and deferred it. The project was revived and shelved again in 2010, in 2013 and in 2015–16. Each round ended the same way: another study, another deferral, another election.

Follow the Money

The airport was privatised in 1997, sold for $1.3 billion on a 50-year lease with an option for 49 more. From that day its owners had a commercial stake in how passengers arrive. Car parking is one of the most profitable things an airport does. In 2017 the ACCC reported that Melbourne Airport was earning more than $370,000 a day from parking, with $1.1 billion over the previous decade — more than any other major airport it monitored.

The Tullamarine Freeway, meanwhile, became part of CityLink, a privately operated toll road. SkyBus built a profitable business carrying the travellers a train would carry.

None of this needs a conspiracy. Each business was acting rationally. But a rail link threatened every one of those revenue streams, and the airport owner controls the land where any station has to go. That gave it a seat at the table — and, as we would see in 2022, the power to slow everything down.

The Ghosts of Sydney and Brisbane

Treasury officials had a second reason for caution: the other cities' experience. Sydney's Airport Link opened in 2000 as a private venture, recovering its costs through a surcharge on airport station tickets. Patronage came in at about a quarter of the forecast. The operating company went into receivership in 2001, leaving the state exposed to costs of around $800 million. The airport station fee is still charged today. Brisbane's privately funded Airtrain, opened in 2001, also fell well short of its early forecasts.

For a Victorian Treasury already wary of the project, those were all the arguments it needed. Market research showing that most Melbourne travellers preferred cars and taxis did the rest.

From a purely personal perspective, I love the fact that when I land in Sydney, I can be at the air train within minutes and be in the city within the hour. In Brisbane, I can get on the train within minutes, pay the charges that come with a commercial operator, but get off at one of the nearby stations and then go all the way to the Gold Coast for fifty cents. The last time I flew to Canberra, I caught the train from my local station to Varsity Lakes and then a bus to Coolangatta airport, in nice air-conditioned comfort, and free wi-fi, for the princely sum of one dollar!, and thereby avoided the sometimes-problematic horror show of M1 Pacific Highway, which, despite its multi-lane configuration can still resemble a carpark, when you least need it to.

Our state governments need to listen to the consumers, now and then.

But I digress… as is my want …

Express or Everyday?

Then there was the route. For decades the debate turned on two different ideas of what the line was for. One was a fast express to the CBD for business travellers and tourists — the model the Coalition has generally favoured. The other was a line through the western suburbs via Sunshine, serving commuters along the way as well as flyers — the model Labor has generally favoured.

Both have merit. But each change of government reopened the question, and a project that keeps changing its purpose never reaches the starting line.

Ten Billion Dollars and Still Waiting

The breakthrough came in 2018. In April, the Turnbull Government committed $5 billion. In July, the Andrews Government matched it — four months before a state election in which Melbourne's western suburbs mattered a great deal. The Sunshine route was chosen, and in 2020 the line was redesigned to run through the new Metro Tunnel. A 2022 business case put the benefit at $2.10 for every dollar spent.

Then the old problems returned. In 2022 the state announced an elevated station at the airport — quicker and cheaper to build. The airport wanted an underground station to suit its own terminal plans. Talks stalled. In 2023 the state paused new contracts. In April 2024 a federal mediator was appointed, and in July 2024 the airport finally agreed to an elevated station. By then the May 2024 state budget had already pushed completion out to 2033 at the earliest. The government blamed the airport. Critics blamed the Suburban Rail Loop, which they said was absorbing the state's infrastructure money.

Since then, the project has moved. The airport and the state signed an agreement in 2025. The Commonwealth added $2 billion, taking its share to $7 billion. Ground was broken on the first stage at Sunshine in February 2026, and two consortia were shortlisted in April for the main Stage 1 contract, to be awarded in 2027. Stage 1, from West Footscray to Albion, is due in 2030; Stage 2, to the airport itself, in 2033.

The Election Wildcard

Victoria goes to the polls on 28 November. The Liberal leader, Jess Wilson, has said she would pause the Suburban Rail Loop. At the 2025 federal election, the Coalition under Peter Dutton proposed scrapping the loop and putting the money into the airport line. Labor says both projects can proceed. Supporters of the loop argue it is a long-term network investment that will carry far more people than an airport branch; its critics call it the reason the airport line slipped.

Whoever wins, the risk is the familiar one: that a new government's priorities become another reason to re-scope, re-sequence or re-announce, rather than to build.

Why This Matters Beyond Melbourne

An airport is not just a passenger terminal. Tullamarine is a 24-hour freight gateway and one of Victoria's largest employment precincts. Every worker, courier and air cargo truck competes for the same congested roads as the travellers who could be on a train. Landside access is part of the supply chain, whether governments plan for it or not.

The pattern is also not unique to Melbourne. This year the Federal Government stopped Inland Rail at Parkes, leaving Queensland's freight line roughly 1,000 kilometres short of Brisbane (I set out that case in “The Inland Rail Betrayal”, also on johngates.au). The ingredients are the same: a project split between Canberra and a state, costs that blow out while decisions are delayed, and a timetable that bends to the election cycle.

Four Lessons

Protect the corridor and keep the commitment bipartisan. Projects that span several terms of government only survive if both sides own them.

Settle the deal with private owners first. Where an airport, port or toll road holds the land, agree the commercial terms before the ribbon-cutting announcement, not after.

Keep the business case apart from the campaign. A project announced to win a seat is a project that can be dropped to save money.

Publish the numbers. Cost reviews and business cases should be public, so voters can judge delays on their merits.

The first passengers who flew out of Tullamarine in 1970 are now in their seventies and eighties. With luck, some of them will still be around to catch the train.

John W Gates is an international trade and transport law consultant, a former naval officer and the author of the eight-volume International Trade and Transport Law Library. He writes the weekly Trade Watch newsletter at johngates.au and is available for media comment, briefings and speaking.

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