Let's live in the air - Melbourne's incredible potential plans to squeeze us all in

Engineering has reached new feats and urban planning and development has made new headway if the propsed architectural and infrastructural plans for Melbourne are to go through with success and flying colours in Melbourne's Parliament, and society in general.

The constructual feats which I speak of comprise of nothing more than the many people we see almost literally flooding into Melbourne on a daily, weekly, monthly, yearly basis living in the air. Literally. In terms of engineering and infrastructural lingo, anyway.

I read this full-page article in The Age newspaper on Tuesday 30.3.2010. In this article, transport reporter Clay Lucas goes about explaining the potential Melbourne has that involves building - get this - more Melbourne physically on top of our existing railway lines. Wow.

In a revolutionary move for the city, and backed by the National Australia Bank, builder Theiss, engineers SKM and architects Grimshaw, building above Melbourne's above ground railway lines would speed-up trains and cars by level crossings, tram/train intersections and obviously create millions to billions of dollars worth of real estate.

This real eatste can be built on, hence increasing the space the city will have to accommodate for the inflow of migrants that we seem to keep-on accommodating for, despite our present massive lack of space and ability to cater-for.

Now that there's a new Transport Minister, Minister Martin Pakula, the Director, Chris Eves of the construction group that wants to make this move, Double Fault, is going to push the idea and seek approval and governmental support. We can only wish him luck given the recent state of... let's say 'stubborness' that Melbourne's politicians seem to have adopted.

To borrow a quote, Eves said that Melbourne's failure to build above its railway lines is 'a very serious waste of a magnificent opportunity. What Melbourne needs is a metro-style transit system and what we have got is a country system that is falling apart under the pressure of such high use. We need better than that, and projects like this are a way of doing that.'

Good on him. I for one, despite the apparent disruptions and near collapse of the transit system I'm sure we would witness, support the suggestion as an extremely valid and monumentally contemporary urban planning and architecural feat, capable of utter practicality and success.

We have had past success with construction above train lines. Take Melbourne's public meeting space, Federation Square for example. Much like our hugely botched failure of a public ticketing system, Myki, Fed. Square came in millions of dollars over budget and about a year late, but still, proved to be a success in terms of building upward above existing train lines - and with success to date, too.

Of course, one major criticism of the notion is that a train that is travelling under the constructions in the air may derail, take out a major load-bearing pylon and cause the collapse of buildings and no doubt, death of many people - something unrealistic given Melbourne's derailing history, but still something that is entriely plausible.

We now have an international consortium running our train system, - of which the train company Metro is apart - which is predominantly focused on property development. MTR's profits mostly come from developing property with much of it above railway lines, not dissimilar to the propsed advance in Melbourne's infrastructure.

I for one am in support of the push. Not that I don't realise the issues it brings, but I occasionally fancy myself as a positivist and realist and realise that such advances in Melbourne would be for the greater, fluctuating population's good.