Public Transport Minister Terry Mulder and Public Transport Victoria CEO Ian Dobbs released the Network Development Plan - Metropolitan Rail detailing what needs to be done in four stages to cope with rail patronage that is expected to double by 2031.
Stage one (up to 2016) includes:
> Regional Rail Link (RRL), including Tarneit and Wyndham Vale stations, Southern Cross platforms 15/16
> Seven new trains and associated stabling and power upgrades
> Hurstbridge line upgrade and Eltham stabling
> An initial order for up to 33 new high capacity trains, each capable of initially carrying up to 1100 passengers and capable of being extended up to 220 metres in length
> 40 new V/Locity carriages
> Williams Landing Station
> Grovedale Station
> Southland Station
> High capacity signalling trial on Sandringham line.
Stage two (within 10 years)
> The Melbourne Metro rail tunnel project, a nine-kilometre rail tunnel between South Kensington and South Yarra via the CBD and five new inner-city stations
> Duplication of the rail line to Melton
> Dandenong Rail Corridor Upgrade
> Deliver initial order of up to 33 high capacity trains, order and deliver a further 70 trains
> Installation of high capacity signalling on the Sandringham, South Morang and Hurstbridge lines and between Sunbury and South Yarra.
Stage three (with in 15 years)
> A new line to Melbourne Airport
> A new line to Rowville
> South Morang services diverted into a new tunnel between Clifton Hill and Southern Cross, allowing construction of a new line to Doncaster
> Electrification to Melton
> Order and deliver extra high capacity trains
> High capacity signalling (Northern and Cross-City groups)
> Continuation of Dandenong Rail Corridor Upgrade.
What do you think?
8 comments:
The plan only relates to rail. Whatever happened to the integration of all public transport modes?
I think the PTUA has got it right (http://www.ptua.org.au/2013/03/27/ptv-rail-plan/) that the govt. is putting the cart before the horse. There's no reason why they can't put the high-capacity signalling in the very next State budget and start installing it ASAP. Then spend money on fixing the major bottlenecks & removing the worst dozen or so level crossings.
Unsurprisingly it looks like they have put the big - sorry, ENORMOUS - ticket items first so that they can sit on their hands (as usual) and point the finger at Canberra for not forking over billions to them for their grandiose schemes, the ones they say that *nothing* can happen till these are completed... which is of course utter nonsense.
Having grown up with a Metropolitan rail system in Berlin, Germany this plan gives me some hope that one day I will prefer the train over the car and it will save me some time when travelling in Melbourne. It is a shame that it has taken so long, but this plan - if implemented - is a start into the right direction and will not make it easier to commute, but also increase the attractiveness of the city to visitors. Great start, let's make sure it get's implemented!
Something does not add up. Rowville railway is scheduled to be done in the 10-15 year time frame. Then later on, in the 15-20 year time frame it talks about PLANNING the Rowville railway.
Does not sound like a serious commitment, even the plan contradicts itself.
Rowville, Doncaster and Airport Lines, plus electrification to Melton should be in Stage 1. Doncaster was in original plans of 1969 and has been talked about ever since!!
Why must we wait so many years for the airport train??? It too has been mooted and studied to death!!
What a load of crap. Nice to see Mernda is in stage 4. I wont be alive to see it. If they are going to do it the should extend to whittlesea as the rail corridor is already there.
This would save money. The housing on this corridor is frightening
Wonderful that they are even considering doing all this no matter which line - but where are all the extra passengers going to park? Or how are they to get to a train station? Until the train-station parking and bus connections are improved across the city only just so many extra passengers will take these new services.
Public transport plan-which plan?
Promises to build something somehow till 2030 (as an ancient Eastern tale about teaching donkey to speak tells, who knows, either donkey or Shah ought to pass away in such passage of time) but
1. Sure spending of public money on more new vehicles as existing run amok empty to please third-word train schedules approved, as one could understood, by overseas-based providers, and/or simply not taking commuters at bus stops
2. Imposing tolls on existing infrastructure to gratify business owners executing a tunnel vision of Melbourne transportation
3. Lacking of any perspective waste of public money as projects just erected / being into construction don’t correspond even the closest developments oncoming (see visual money-winding at Footscray station recently where renovation-in-progress demanded a demolition of constructions erected about a year ago).
Anyway, who cares in a traditional penal colony where provincial princelings open overseas-representing offices somehow competing with Australian Commonwealth’?
Perhaps, local money-grabbing concerns of the same privileged are a discussion topic even less affordable for commoners law-obedient.
Michael Kerjman
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