Located at the edge of Melbourne’s CBD, the station is the city’s hub for regional trains, coach services, and the airport shuttle bus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Concerns over the impact of diesel fumes from those vehicles set Mr Loveridge on a quest for answers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2007, he asked the private company overseeing management of the station for air-quality data \u2014 but he hit a brick wall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A representative from Southern Cross Ptd Ltd, a subsidiary of Civic Nexus, told him the station met government project requirements and compliance and it would not enter any further discussion with him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Outraged, he wrote back again to the station’s management insisting on access to the data from the previous 12 months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “What are you hiding?” he asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “As a P\/T user, and as I spend a fair chunk of my time at Southern Cross station, I want to see just what you guys are exposing me and the people who work there to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Smells like a cover up when you won’t send me the air quality test results\u2026”<\/p>\n\n\n\n He received this response from the then-CEO Phillip Walker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “You seem to be under some impression that we are compelled to provide information to you \u2013 that is not the case, we are a privately run organisation and as such we correspond with you out of courtesy not necessity,” Mr Walker wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He went on to explain the station did not release its air monitoring data publicly because “testing methodology and the data is complex and we have no intention of engaging in a debate on the technical merits of the testing program”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A Civic Nexus spokesperson told the ABC they had no comment to make on statements made more than 16 years ago. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Over the years, different organisations, including the Victorian Greens, have tried to access the same figures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Last year, the ABC applied under freedom-of-information laws for air-quality data at the station.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After a nine-month freedom-of-information battle \u2014 including an appeal to the Victorian Information Commissioner \u2014 the Victorian Department of Transport and Planning released more than 500 pages of air pollution reports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What those reports reveal has concerned two of the country’s leading respiratory experts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They say the air pollution in parts of the station is so high that it puts human health at risk, and likely contains some of the “least clean air” in Melbourne.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They’ve also raised concerns the reports likely aren’t presenting the full picture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Much of the data released was presented in images of graphs \u2014 with limited raw data available \u2014 making it difficult to sort through and understand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Several of those graphs contained chunky lines, making it hard to decipher exactly what values were represented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n