Reader mailbag: Weird urban planning edition

Hoisted from the inbox:

Weird urban planning stories: Melbourne's Eastern Freeway is being considered for heritage listing.

Heritage Victoria has backed the Andrews government’s application to heritage list Melbourne’s Eastern Freeway, finding that the road’s “naturalistic landscape setting” and “series of distinctive concrete road overpasses” make it worthy...

In his recommendation to the Heritage Council, Heritage Victoria Executive Director Steven Avery has supported the Andrews government’s heritage application in a report describing the road as “a fine, intact, influential and pivotal example of a freeway”.

“The Eastern Freeway – Stage One is also historically significant for the prolonged and at times violent community protests that met its announcement, construction and opening,” Mr Avery found.

This is the second-worst urban planning story I've read this week. However, it turns out that the heritage listing is intended to block construction of a connecting freeway with a BCR of 0.8, so perhaps this is actually good from a broader economic efficiency perspective?

This is the worst urban planning story I've seen this week, and possibly ever.

I suspect that the second-best case fails to hold - there will surely sometime be a project that would have a better BCR that will get blocked by this. I don't know if the same nonsense applies to roads as to houses, but even a resurfacing could wind up being tricky, or repainting the lines.

That last link is pretty bad.