In March 2001, the Minister for Transport announced that the Melbourne City Link Authority was undertaking a review of the public safety and traffic management aspects of CityLink (which was subsequently completed by the Office of the Director, Melbourne City Link) (Office of the Director, Melbourne CityLink 2002: p.III). The purpose of this review was not only to assess the statutory authority's ability to manage its public safety functions, but to advise on the structure and resources needed for the State to meet its obligations for the management of its contractual arrangements with Transurban City Link (Office of the Director, Melbourne CityLink 2002: p.48), relating to, for instance, policy, transport, tolling and customer relations issues (Office of the Director, Melbourne CityLink 2002: p.49).
The review concluded that to meet these obligations, the Melbourne City Link Authority would need to increase its scope to "reflect the significance of the State's commercial relationship with the Transurban parties" (Office of the Director, Melbourne CityLink 2002: p.52), and thus, bolster its capacity for providing clear accountability for the ongoing management of existing contractual agreements, simplifying reporting arrangements (to the Minister) and ensuring appropriate "interface" between its concessionary responsibilities and wider departmental concerns (Office of the Director, Melbourne CityLink 2002: p.53). Based on these requirements, four structures were presented to Government for consideration. The option accepted was the creation of the statutory position (and associated functions) of the Director, Melbourne City Link, which was to become a unit within the Department of Infrastructure (Office of the Director, Melbourne CityLink 2002: p.53). As such, the Office was responsible for providing independent advice to Government on all matters relating to CityLink, the development of high level skills for the provision of legal, commercial, financial, engineering and policy advice, as well as the facilitation of the retention of corporate memory (Office of the Director, Melbourne CityLink 2002: p.52-55).