Big merger: VicRoads and PTV to become one mega-agency
VicRoads and Public Transport Victoria will be merged into one mega-agency within the Department of Transport from July 1.
Premier Daniel Andrews declined to say if staff will be relocated in the bureaucratic merger, but said no jobs would be lost.
Mr Andrews said on Thursday that this was out of respect to staff, who had not been briefed about the change.
The premier said the agencies needed to keep up with the changing nature of the state’s transport networks, which are increasingly planned as one.
He said the new transport agency, which is yet to be named, would better integrate road and rail planning and operations.
"We don’t run a road, rail and tram network separately, we run a transport network," he said, adding that transport departments had functioned "in too separate a way" in the past.
"I want to make the point that there will be no job losses," he said. "We’re essentially hiring as it stands right now to get the work we’ve got planned done."
The government has set up some agencies in regional Victoria, including basing Solar Homes in Morwell, and Regional Roads Victoria in Ballarat.
It has long been speculated that it is looking for an opportunity to sell VicRoads’ headquarters in Kew.
It is not the first time the Andrews government has rejigged its transport bureaucracy to suit its huge building agenda.
In 2016 it created Transport for Victoria, a specialist planning authority that also merged functions within PTV and VicRoads.
But it later bypassed the agency in planning its biggest ever initiative, the $50 billion suburban rail loop.
Mr Andrews said the new agency would go "one step beyond Transport for Victoria", delivering on policy and on services.
"The road system and the rail system can’t be separated; they are one system, and they need to be reformed," he said.
Further details are expected to be announced later today.