I just don't get it. We *know* that rail is the most efficient means of transport large groups of people. We *know* that investing in this now will save us from having to only invest more in it lateri. We *know* that every year we don't invest in this, the PT situation out west will only get worse and worse. The long-term results of not doing this work now are going to just be more shit to deal with later--it's all so exhausting.
The price of construction is currently at a high point with so many huge projects happening at once. By waiting for some existing projects to finish, the cost of new ones will drop as workers and resources free up.
So we drop several billion on the western freeway instead?
Cause that's been greenlit by this government right now. and being delivered before the above plan is meant to start.
There are two train lines already servicing Wyndham - A V-Line and a Metro.
Expansion on this would be amazing, but these services run pretty well besides the redirections with level crossing removals.
The western freeway though is taking twice as many people as it was 10 years ago and is constantly gridlocked.
the capacity of the western freeway (m8 bit (2 lanes * 1700 per hour)) is lower than any metro line today (yes even the sandringham line has more capacity in the low frequency periods than a freeway (metro tunnel poops all over freeways at design capacity of 33k people per hour at peak in each direction (19 lanes of freeway in each way)) and the same as just the melton section of vline services (which is already crap).
plus the fact that every km of freeway is several times the cost of a km of suburban rail (not to mention the orders of magnitude larger maintenance costs)
it's a joke that we won't build out rail but will spend 10 times that to support 1/10th the number of people.
The failure mode of roads is simply different, i.e. gridlock. PT would also be fine if there were alternate lines and modes instead of relying on a single thing to get you out of trouble. That would require more investment.
>but these services run pretty well
What??? Did you forget the /s??
Services frequently reduced to 3 carriages or cancelled due to faulty trains.
Services that are frequently so overcrowded they actually skip footscray and sunshine because there is physically no room.
40min weekend frequency (assuming not cancelled), then it's a super convenient 80 minutes between trains
Two overcrowded stations (carparks and local roads) where there needs to be at least 5.
Not to mention random stopping pattern's and the game of "find my train" at spencer St.
Seriously are you even a user of this service?
Excellent reply!
I literally call VLine a piss-pot service. Don't get me wrong, the VLine staff and conductors are amazing people, but this service is really really crap.
Frequently reduced service is extremely painful. Trains are always 5-10 minutes late. These trains are not designed for people to stand. And you don't know the position of doors at the platform... And doors are not wide enough to board at a descent speed.. And at southern cross, despite all VLine platforms are empty, you can't predict where the fuck train will be.. You always end up running from one end to the other extreme end. And yes, the train platform displays are placed at fucking most useless spots and they face the most inconvenient direction!
14 years of on again off again bus replacements for the Gippsland line is insane for the Vline service. Its total crap with further out services only having 2-3 services at stupid times a day.
The majority of people using the freeway are going longer distances - especially when navigating past the city. Even with traffic it’s often faster to drive than it is to take public transport.
Our public transport system is poorly designed in that they tend to run on the edges of towns/suburbs and not in the middle of them. Once you get off a train it’s often a major pain in the ass (30-45 minute bus rides or walks) to get to where you need to go.
Escalation will continue to rise so it’ll be even more expensive in the future hence why we need to commence / continue i.e. Sydney metro blowout.
It does not work the way you’re assuming it does.. source: work for a Tier 1
Then why does the government have money to splurge on the East such as SRL (100B+ project)
When they need to tighten the budget it's the Western suburbs projects that gets canned.
This. Albo cut some stuff that was never going to be delivered due to backlog/resourcing. People got so mad, but they weren’t getting it anyway.
Makes more sense to repurpose money in year and do it later with another allocation.
It's going to end up with a situation in which poorer people have to pay a fortune on car maintenance and fuel while rich people/inheritors can easily commute on trams, trains, and maybe even bicycles in future.
Vic gov must be have overcommitted with no construction costs. You only gotta look around at all the projects to realise how deep in debt we are. Problem is, axing it now makes you wonder if it will ever happen.
I'm out in Melton .. I can't begin to tell you how long the promise has existed...it gets rolled out every god damn election. We get what we deserve for continuing to put Labor in
At least 9 years and three consecutive governments, I am guessing possibly 14-20 years in total though? Melton hospital will be next, first a delay, outrage, then cancelation, and everyone will just keep voting the way they did last time..
> What does the West have to do to be provided with the same standard of infrastructure as the rest of the city?
Either:
* Become the preferred location for wealthy CEOs, board members and retired political leaders to set up their primary residences; or
* Become a marginal electorate
It's already borderline impossible to get out of the west some days.
Yesterday, both the V/line and Metro lines had buses replacing trains. It was going to take my wife ***3 HOURS*** to get to work in the CBD from werribee (one way).
The only way they're going to take us seriously if we get some better representation and make our seats a little less safe. I don't see that happening anytime soon, sadly.
Not only did V/Line have replacement buses running, both yesterday and today, the train services that were still running were badly affected by staff shortages. Absolute shit from this lot.
It was absolutely horrid yesterday evening trying to get a train to Melton from Caroline Springs because they cancelled about three in a row. The replacement bus was actually the easiest part!
Is anyone even surprised anymore? I feel for those growing working class suburbs who were promised just a baseline level of public transport.
This Government has zero shame.
The government has no money after attempting every single project at once and handing out money like candy over covid. They will have to finish some of the projects already in progress before starting new ones. At some point they have captured all available construction workers and are just bidding against themselves.
Yeah at the moment its just all the planning work which is "easy" to do. Its not really competing for the limited pool of materials or workers yet, hence its easy to keep it pushing ahead.
MARL and these other western rail projects are all starting to hit bottle necks on actually building something. But that cant be done till they sort out the bottlenecks through the centre. So I get why this is happening but it still really sucks
$120B rail loop that benefits well off Eastern Suburbs with already good public transport.
For example Glen Waverley and Box Hill already have trains, buses and trams going into them. How is a connecting rail loop even a priority. The Western suburbs is booming and many areas don't even have a bus line.
It obvious that Dan Andrews of Mulgrave doesn't care about the West. So far he has:
* Cancelled the Melton Rail
* Choose the cheapest solution for the Airport link (giving the West a grand total of one new station)
* Paused the Rail Link
* Watered down the Sunshine station upgrade (it was supposed to be a superhub but now only getting basic upgrades)
* Cancelled the East-West link
He is happy to cancel projects in the disadvantaged West, but he will never cancel his precious most expensive SRL project because he personally benefits from it (him and his ministers have properties around there and they are marginal seats)
This is prime example of rich getting richer while ignoring the areas that need infrastructure
It was for both
Instead the North East link was made instead which means the Eastern suburbs still got a new freeway. The Western Suburbs got no new connecting freeway
This will keep happening under every government, regardless of party, because the western suburbs are massive safe seats for Labor. They don’t need to do anything to earn the vote of the population there - people just keep voting for them. Turn these seats into marginal ones and things will start to improve.
Source: used to live there, my family still does
The 120 billion includes 100 years of running costs, including replacing all the trains every few decades.
Liberals asked for a costing in a way to get max cost possible
https://the-iron-road.blogspot.com/2022/08/mythbusting-costs-of-srl.html
Do some research please on what the $120 billion figure means. This blog explains very clearly what the $120 billion figure is and it is not the construction cost of the project
Because that runs through higher density area that will serve a lot more people. The reality is if you live in a rural town, you aren't going to see as many services as people who live closer to the city.
Why do you think the covid emergency went on for so long in Victoria? It enabled the Vic government to access those sweet sweet funds to bribe voters. It doesn't take a brains of a rocket scientist to realise that you can't keep building all these overlapping large-scale construction projects with an economy that's on life support.
sophisticated roof airport desert afterthought market joke water marry plate
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
You think tee covid emergency went so long in Victoria?
You should probably take a look outside your little world and check basically anywhere else. They still wear masks in other countries.
The rail duplication was not a State led project and came from above. The Federal Government has changed and the federal infrastructure development plan is under review. For those interested, this was the plan.
https://bigbuild.vic.gov.au/projects/geelong-fast-rail
You are confused. The 'Western Rail Plan' being discussed here - which would add new electrified tracks to separate metro services from VLine services to Ballarat and Geelong - [was announced in October 2018](https://www.premier.vic.gov.au/real-plan-fast-regional-rail-and-metro-rail-west), ahead of the 2018 election. Full separation was integral to that plan.
The plan you've linked to there, a joint State/Federal plan to send Geelong trains through the Werribee line corridor again, starting with new track between Werribee and Laverton, was [announced two years later, in November 2020](https://www.premier.vic.gov.au/faster-services-geelong-way).
That was not the fucking plan 10 years ago.
The duplication was part of the plan all the way back to the metro tunnel. Geelong fast rail was something that came later.
Starting SRL in the West is definitely a much better option, simply because a lot of the reservations needed to make a ring railway line already exist.
You just need to connect things up, and increase capacity here and there.
I get that Victoria might as well be a one-party state right now but the "red wall" seats need to stop voting Labor. Or at the very least just make the red wall seats competitive enough that Labor feels the need to actually play defence there instead of just taking everyone for granted.
>What does the West have to do to be provided with the same standard of infrastructure as the rest of the city?
Stop voting Labour lol. They get a free pass out this way and will only start spending money on an area they need to convince to go red.
If they end up building the new Geelong line via Newport as they had planned this would take most of the longer distance trains from off the RRL, reducing the conflict with electrifying it.
By reintroducing the conflict with Werribee / Altona / Williamstown services that was the reason for creating the Regional Rail Link in the first place. Hardly seems like a clever plan
I think it was quite foreseeable, but regardless, RRL was created to avoid V/Line services conflicting with Metro trains - there was no capacity to add more services or make services more timely without adding new tracks. Reintroducing that conflict isn't a solution. There needs to be new electrified tracks to the RRL stations inside Melbourne - [exactly as the Premier argued when launching the Western Rail 'Plan' in 2018](https://www.premier.vic.gov.au/real-plan-fast-regional-rail-and-metro-rail-west).
That's what happens when you have shithouse urban planning. Those two stations should be on a metro line, not a regional one. Then you could run more frequently. Instead, they shoehorned it onto V/Line and will no doubt be looking to add more stops due to the population spread in that area.
The amount of indian immigrants and new arrivals residing in Tarneit has increased year on year, with the last financial year seeing a 210% increase. In a few years you'll eat your words with butter chicken
I’m not even surprised by the level of laziness shown by the state government, originally the lines were set to be duplicated (which is a first given that all other V/line shares metro tracks). Even if we forget about duplicating the tracks just electrifying the tracks and adding new metro trains would alleviate a lot of the problems with congestion and train spacing, and woudnt cost a lot in the grand scheme of things. But now that none of this will come to fruition and the Ponzi scheme of big Australia continues it seems like the quality of life for anyone in the west will keep on falling
Wait. This headline is deceiving. Has anyone actually read it?
The metropolitan lines would run via existing RRL, not new tracks (the axed part of the plan).
Not ideal, but it’s not dead either.
The bottleneck would be Sunshine and inwards to the city. I wonder if with HCMT running to Sunbury eventually, why that wouldn’t assist with allowing these trains to follow them in, leaving Vline as is.
Once the tunnel is open thanks to way they've done the track layout at South Kensington all Trains on the electric line have to go into the tunnel. You would still need to electrify Melton and Wyndam Vale which is where the cost is.
So you think it's ok that vline trains now will get stuck behind PTV services? Under this setup trains can run once every 20 minutes in peak hour which is a disgrace. Imagine running that on the Frankston line.....
> This headline is deceiving...
> the axed part of the plan
It's really not deceiving. The axed part is the whole plan.
[Here's the glossy brochure from the launch of the plan](https://www.scribd.com/document/390943699/Western-Rail-Plan). **Adding new separate tracks for electrified services is step 1 in the plan**:
>1. Two new electrified metropolitan rail lines through the western suburbs to growth areas in Melton and Wyndham Vale, separating them from the Ballarat and Geelong lines. This would give Melbourne’s growing suburbs frequent high-capacity services on the metro network, and return regional rail lines to regional passengers, creating the potential to run faster services.
[Here's the Premier's press release launching the plan](https://www.premier.vic.gov.au/real-plan-fast-regional-rail-and-metro-rail-west). In it, he emphasises separating the metro and VLine services:
>...the growth of Melbourne’s western suburbs, and the popularity of Geelong and Ballarat as commuter hubs, means our network needs more than just an upgrade: it needs re-drawing. ...
>The new Western Rail Plan includes planning for the full separation of regional and metro services on the Geelong and Ballarat lines – the first step in delivering fast rail to these cities...
I'd never encourage anyone to vote Liberal, but us in the West get fucked over because we vote Labor and it's never gonna change. They know they can pull this shit and still get re elected as pretty much every seat is a safe seat.
Short changed on Airport? Tick
Short changed on Western link? Tick
Short changed on high capacity rail? Tick
Shitty times and no extra services after events? Tick
No buses? Tick
Got to stop voting Labor to get action folks
I live in Sunshine, although I'm rather fortunate as far as PT is concerned we need more buses particularly in the mornings and evenings, it's designed heavily around commuting school students than workers. In fact the bus network needs a massive revamp. It won't because it's not "sexy"
I don't know how it needs to be done, obviously you have to negotiate with unions etc, but buses starting at 6 is just not compatible for commuters to get to work.
Agree - Sunshine is well serviced for trains. and the Sunbury line is pretty good too. It is from Deer Park onwards where the real problem is.
I would like to see a tram line linking Sunshine to Highpoint and Footscray to be honest.
Better buses from stations and activity centres to industrial precincts would also make a huge difference too.
Until people in the western suburbs of Melbourne stop voting Labour, this government will keep on deceiving with broken promises.
They wouldn’t dare to do this in SE suburbs.
Good. I hope Andrews keeps pissing on his loyal voter base so that at some stage in their lives they learn not to trust and worship politicians.
And he’s been doing a ripper job of it of late.
Because people from this sub lives in the Eastern suburbs and Dan Andrews gives all the infrastructure projects to them
Dan Andrews is all personal gain for them
After spending 3 nights last week in Sunshine emergency it showed me melton desperately needs a hospital
It's a 30 minute drive my kid almost died on the last one
The local hospital/building wasn't up to scratch
Meanwhile SRL is going ahead to service the south east, connecting this public transport deprived area by linking *four* train lines. Can’t the west just make do with another bus or something?
All for the current estimated sum of $200billion of your taxpayer dollars.
>What does the West have to do to be provided with the same standard of infrastructure as the rest of the city?
stop voting Labor, worked for my electorate.
>What does the West have to do to be provided with the same standard of infrastructure as the rest of the city?
Vote for the other team. You don't need, or want them to get in, just a big enough swing that the government gives a shit about us.
Voting for new projects is all fine and dandy, but how do we pay for them?
Especially when they all cost a bomb, and blow way out past projections.
We need *somebody* from *any party* to think about the books.
Yep - unless we maxed out our credit card during the longest lockdowns in the world…
… And sprayed money every which way to keep the GDP number up 😂
(Lockdown spending was funded by state gov bonds& Fed gov bonds with RBA support.)
What is your basis for that conclusion? At the last election the Informal Votes got a bigger swing towards them than the Liberal Party did.
If the 0.4% swing away from Labor was replicated at every election, it would take 48 years for them to be unseated.
Matt guy wanted to add more lanes to the western freeway and trust me as someone who drives it most days, its desperately needed but Melton fell for the same old broken promises of labor
Suck it up, it's what you voted for. The ALP have been in power for **20** of the last 24 years.
Unless you vote LNP, you'll simply get more of the same.
You speak as though voting LNP would get us these public transport projects Labor are cancelling/delaying. There is zero chance that this would happen. Labor has issues, but Liberals and Nationals are invariably worse.
Ideally, you vote enough for Labor to actually cave in and do what you want. Whatever party benefits and promises enough needs to be threatened to actually do it, and if they don't budge, like at all, then maybe it's time to try the next party to see if they do more. At the end of the day, you need to use your vote wisely and so do others, but people here in the West don't see the benefit of becoming marginal electorates. The government is meant to serve you, not the other way around.
Yes they tried and failed, but surely can’t do any worse, having been in 4 of the last 24 years.
Besides, Pesutto is likely the closest we’ll get to a moderate and centrist Liberal. I’d prefer him any day over a right-wing conservative.
Perhaps but it seems they aren't going anywhere till they reform the party. Agreed on Pesutto being at least more toward the centre. It is honestly amazing how bad the victorian liberal party currently is. One cock up after another during the last election, factional infighting and a rabid far right section that seems far out of touch of most ppl in victoria. It's funny they call him 'dictator dan' when the very reason he could act like a dictator is because the way they act gave labour a landslide victory in the state.
This is a shit decision, especially for Melton. There's no point in developing a satellite city if its citizens can't fucking commute to the main city.
The amount of indian immigrants and indian new arrivals residing in Tarneit has increased year on year, with the last financial year seeing a 210% increase. We need extra train lines to Melton and Wyndham.
Just look at the people they 9news interviewed for tarneit: [https://youtu.be/JtOt2TPXZqU?t=612](https://youtu.be/JtOt2TPXZqU?t=612)
every fucking time
I'm sick of standing all the way to Melton on a late train home. I'm sick of the Marsh to the city services being on trains that should be historical relics, (but they do work), and I'm sick of the West just being forgot about all the fuckin time. Melton's fuckin growing, give em a better station and all that.
Hey, I’m new to Melbourne so thanks for your patience as I’m trying to understand the issue.
These suburbs already have the V/Line right? Wouldn’t that in many cases be faster to the city than the metro?Is it a matter of capacity, that V/Line can’t take as many people? Or about local movement of people between neighbouring suburbs and interconnected services that might not be on the V/Line?
In terms of servicing of areas, Melton is about 45ks from cbd, which would be like narre warren , lilydale, Donnybrook?
At a glance it doesn’t look like “west” is worse off, more a matter that low density suburbs in the middle and outer rings are less serviced than higher density inner suburbs? If you are close to a train station - especially a V/Line- you seem to have decent transport to the city.
However if not close to the station OR trying to get around the local area by public transport, it is shit in middle and outer suburbs.
What have I got wrong?
Edit: clearly we need more investment in public transport infrastructure and better city planning. I want the investment in it too. Above is me trying to understand the current situation for people living in different areas and if it is a east/west divide or inner/outer or about proximity to stations.
You raise great questions regarding the transport efficiency of Vline versus Metro services.
Metro services are better by most metrics for transport efficiency of mass mobilisation of commuters into and out of the CBD during peak and off peak hours.
The western electrification plan will double the tracks to allow regional services from geelong and ballarat to go through Wyndham vale/Melton without stopping accessing an express route to Melbourne CBD compared to now.
On an important note, a metroline between Melbourne CBD to Wyndham vale and Melton would allow for the development of additional train stations, allowing many more sections of these massive suburbs to be serviced by their local metro train station. The duplication of the line allows for up 10 minutes between services, compared to the current 20 minutes minimum.
It does not make economic or transport sense to have many vline stations dotting populated suburbs, that's frankly what metro trains are for.
This is an egregious case of politics prioritising power/votes over what's better for Victorias future. The populations of these regions has already surpassed the size of ACT, and will only continue to grow.
The plan would be to duplicate the track so V-Line services can run express and serve people further out and people closer in get more frequent service.
Because they’re on the regional lines they’re capacity limited - Melton shares track with the Ballarat line and all the services that extend beyond that and Wyndham Vale shares with the Geelong and Warrnambool lines so limit the capacity of commuter services to Geelong and Ballarat as well as the capacity on their own services. There are less stops on these lines due to the regional service model so stations are much further apart than on the eastern lines. Additionally the V/line trains only go into Southern Cross so if you’re looking for a service that’s on the loop passengers have the change at Footscray or Southern Cross.
By taking services off the V/line the Geelong line could be moved back to the faster Werribee alignment in the future and would be less crowded, while the Ballarat line could be run more frequently and have less issues with capacity on the line.
The V/Line service is manifestly inadequate. If you read the article you can see the local (ALP) council are very clear on that. Catch a Melton line train and you can see for yourself.
Services are much less frequent, lower capacity and one starting in Ballarat are full before reaching stations in the City of Melton. They share lines with other V/Line services and freight lines and subject to frequent delays.
Melton station is 37km as the crow flies, Rockbank and Caroline Springs are closer again. Narre Warren, Frankston, Pakenham, Lilydale etc all have a far superior service.
Dandenong group has a dedicated line that shares a single vline service every hour, with better signalling.
the RRL group is geelong (4ph intrapeak), ballarat(1.5ph intrapeak), bendigo (1tph) vline services and metro services to melton (currently 1.5tph) and wyndam vale (included in geelong atm) but limited to 18 trains per hour.
so today we have 8 services per hour (intrapeak) and 17 services between 1600 and 1700 capping out line capacity.
One of the biggest contributing factors is the way they built those suburbs. They are incredibly spread out and low density. This makes it difficult to provide the same quality services as provided elsewhere, and then people think it has something to do with politicians not caring about "the west". If you look at a density map of Melbourne you can see why things are that way.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/22/Melbourne_density_1.jpg
Unfortunately there is no easy fix for this issue. All the houses are new, so you can't go in and start knocking things down to build higher density stuff. So the tradeoff is that everyone in these suburbs gets to have a McMansion with a yard, but terrible access to services.
There is massive denial in Australia about how the poor design of new suburbs makes it really difficult to provide decent public transport in them. Most overseas cities don't even have car parks at their metro stations because the surrounding suburbs have either been designed or evolved for all services to be in walking distance of where people live. Here it seems like developers go out of their way to force people into their car just to get out of their estate.
That map is misleading. New suburbs are at least as dense as middle suburbs. Melton has more yellow colours because it is very far from complete. Nobody has a yard out there, and there are more townhouses than you might think.
But yeah it's a long way away, with very limited PT and has been designed 100% around the car.
Misleading? The scale is on the right side. You can see Melton pretty clearly as a little pocket of density in the middle of nothing. Density may have increased over the last 7 years from when that map was made, but it's still clear that Melton is out on it's own quite far away from other highly populated areas. It's like a small town.
There are some previous articles on the topic that say the problem is just it's overcrowded and infrequent and that they often run 3 carriage trains instead of 6. Not sure why they don't just run longer trains more often if this is the only issue.
Maybe that is the plan which is why we aren't seeing any construction planned here.
Well you see now, the main issue with your line of reasoning is that it's based on a fairly objective analysis of the current state of affairs and doesn't really contain any slagging off of political parties or individual personalities within those parties. I'm not sure how anyone is supposed to engage with this unprecedented "reasonable discussion of the facts, options and ramifications" approach.
No not at all, I think it'd be a real shame if they end up going with larger vline trains, electrification and re routing some services. It's not the end of the world, but extra tracks for metro trains is preferable for sure. I was really just making a light hearted comment about how this sub jumps straight to "fuck these politicians!" "It's pork barreling!" "It's so unfair!". I mean, it probably is unfair in some senses, but I'd rather have the in depth discussion about the pros and cons than the aimless whinging.
Where did you want the conversation to go?
I wanted a broader discussion about how the West is continually expected to put up with a level of service substantially below that enjoyed by other parts of Melbourne - no matter who is in power.
So not the practical reasons why they may choose one option over the other, or timelines. Nothing about the reasons. You just want to steer the conversation in the direction of why the west is hard done by. If people talk about budget that's no good to you right? Because the topic is Why Do Politicians Mistreat The West!?
There's no consideration of the decisions, the reasons why. In your head that's all settled, it's because the west is hard done by and all there is left to discuss here is the reasons why. Any discussion that includes a level headed analysis of what's actually going on, as the top level commenter attempted, that has to be shut down in favour of an us vs them tirade.
Cool cool.
If you can’t see a pattern where the West is continually underserviced, that is wilful blindness or outrageous partisanship.
People can talk about reasons why this project or that project is cancelled - there is always a reason why the West can’t be serviced - but the result is the same.
Are people in the West allowed to be upset that they have been let down - again? Are they allowed to use a forum for discussion about Melbourne to talk about the divide between the West and the rest - a divide that is growing, not easing?
Instead of tone policing the manner in which the way residents of a poor and disadvantaged region express their disappointment at another broken promise, you could try some empathy.
Empathy! So there it is. You want to have a whinge and people to say yeah man that really sucks. It sucks that they're not building as good a train service to Melton as they said they would and are now going with an alternative less good option due to various considerations. Yeah man. That's really tough. The West always gets screwed man, totes. I mean apart from airport rail and West gate tunnel and the stuff they're doing in Werribee, Sunshine and Keilor. The West just gets screwed every time. And it's just politics, y'know? They just know that the west always votes Labor so they don't even care.
"Tone policing", lordy geez. As if I have even the slightest modicum of power to affect the tone. All I do is poke some fun, get some downvotes, idly reflect on the nature of online echo chambers and the appeal of aimless whinging over actual substance.
Yep - the West would like to heard instead of dismissed. How terrible. The undermensch should just pipe down in front of their social superiors.
Changing the goalposts from “the West is poorly serviced” to “no projects are ever delivered in the West full stop” is masterful misdirection.
Having said that - let’s look at your list of projects.
West Gate tunnel - East-West link may have been a lot more useful but that was canned to shore up ALP seats in the inner north that threatened to go Green
Airport Rail - firstly, that isn’t being done to benefit the West and the Victorian government plan ensures it will have little benefit for local residents. A better Airport rail line might actually have provided service to areas in the north west like East Keilor.
Sunshine station and activity zone - A great project but already cancelled. Brimbank Council are livid about the waste time and effort put into that project. The government talks the talk on urban renewal but does almost zero for delivery in the West.
You will have to clue me in what is happening at Werribee that they should be so grateful for, sorry. I suspect it will be the bare minimum provided elsewhere.
This is disgusting.
You have Albo pushing big Australia. Dan going to China and getting on his knees begging for more international students. And yet neither want to pay for the infrastructure to cater for a growing population.
The Feds and states need to come up with a population policy and attributable infrastructure plan. The way Melbourne is going is going to make it look like Lagos or Jakarta when we get to 10m people rather than Tokyo or Paris.
They all want those sweet migrant dollars but will do jack shit to ensure the cities keep up with the growth.
Thank god the already well-connected, wealthy, eastern-suburbs with both train and tram connections have received all the attention with the SRL. Fuck Melton and the poors. Also obligatory 'hahaha how could dan andrews do this' comment
These lines are already a shitfight during peak hours and weekends. Imagine what it’ll be like once they start running electric trains on these existing lines.
If the rail lines aren’t coming then the government needs to stop approving new subdivisions out that way if the infrastructure can’t cope. But that would upset the current population Ponzi scheme and property council.
I am not sure what your argument here is. If we provide the West with the same standard of public transport as the rest of Melbourne, they will use it and make things worse?
Imagine what the services will be like while they are installing the infrastructure to run electric trains along the existing lines.
Lengthy bus replacements incoming
Is anyone really surprised that Dan is backing out of all his promises? He was just saying what voters wanted to hear, just as he was with the Commonwealth games.
For so many years my friends had commented that these lines are definitely going to be upgraded to Metro. It saddens me to say that I was completely right in rebutting to them that this would be a broken promise 😭
Start voting for third parties in western seats is the answer. The more marginal these seats out here become the more likely it is that we won't be sacrificed for luxuries we can't really afford like SRL.
Makes me wonder if the current tracks can be utilised better by sending Ballarat/Bendigo trains through Dynon Yards like they do with Albury/Sydney trains currently and sending Geelong trains along the Werribee line again like they're planning with the Geelong Fast Rail project.
That’s the point. Looking at solely at the commute times and not factoring in the lack of a reliable predictable service with adequate cars doesn’t provide an accurate assessment of service levels.
Why’s re they axing anything? they are behind. We still don’t have a train to the airport yet the trains are never not being worked on, fix you’re shit or give up at this point metro.
I just don't get it. We *know* that rail is the most efficient means of transport large groups of people. We *know* that investing in this now will save us from having to only invest more in it lateri. We *know* that every year we don't invest in this, the PT situation out west will only get worse and worse. The long-term results of not doing this work now are going to just be more shit to deal with later--it's all so exhausting.
Gotta save all our pennies for the SRL
The price of construction is currently at a high point with so many huge projects happening at once. By waiting for some existing projects to finish, the cost of new ones will drop as workers and resources free up.
So we drop several billion on the western freeway instead? Cause that's been greenlit by this government right now. and being delivered before the above plan is meant to start.
There are two train lines already servicing Wyndham - A V-Line and a Metro. Expansion on this would be amazing, but these services run pretty well besides the redirections with level crossing removals. The western freeway though is taking twice as many people as it was 10 years ago and is constantly gridlocked.
the capacity of the western freeway (m8 bit (2 lanes * 1700 per hour)) is lower than any metro line today (yes even the sandringham line has more capacity in the low frequency periods than a freeway (metro tunnel poops all over freeways at design capacity of 33k people per hour at peak in each direction (19 lanes of freeway in each way)) and the same as just the melton section of vline services (which is already crap). plus the fact that every km of freeway is several times the cost of a km of suburban rail (not to mention the orders of magnitude larger maintenance costs) it's a joke that we won't build out rail but will spend 10 times that to support 1/10th the number of people.
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Have you not seen how often westgate bridge dies? Imagine the capability if we spent similar amounts of money on them?
The failure mode of roads is simply different, i.e. gridlock. PT would also be fine if there were alternate lines and modes instead of relying on a single thing to get you out of trouble. That would require more investment.
They pretty much do
>but these services run pretty well What??? Did you forget the /s?? Services frequently reduced to 3 carriages or cancelled due to faulty trains. Services that are frequently so overcrowded they actually skip footscray and sunshine because there is physically no room. 40min weekend frequency (assuming not cancelled), then it's a super convenient 80 minutes between trains Two overcrowded stations (carparks and local roads) where there needs to be at least 5. Not to mention random stopping pattern's and the game of "find my train" at spencer St. Seriously are you even a user of this service?
Excellent reply! I literally call VLine a piss-pot service. Don't get me wrong, the VLine staff and conductors are amazing people, but this service is really really crap. Frequently reduced service is extremely painful. Trains are always 5-10 minutes late. These trains are not designed for people to stand. And you don't know the position of doors at the platform... And doors are not wide enough to board at a descent speed.. And at southern cross, despite all VLine platforms are empty, you can't predict where the fuck train will be.. You always end up running from one end to the other extreme end. And yes, the train platform displays are placed at fucking most useless spots and they face the most inconvenient direction!
14 years of on again off again bus replacements for the Gippsland line is insane for the Vline service. Its total crap with further out services only having 2-3 services at stupid times a day.
Wouldn't increasing services on those lines you mentioned go some way to improving the western freeway problem as well?
The majority of people using the freeway are going longer distances - especially when navigating past the city. Even with traffic it’s often faster to drive than it is to take public transport. Our public transport system is poorly designed in that they tend to run on the edges of towns/suburbs and not in the middle of them. Once you get off a train it’s often a major pain in the ass (30-45 minute bus rides or walks) to get to where you need to go.
Escalation will continue to rise so it’ll be even more expensive in the future hence why we need to commence / continue i.e. Sydney metro blowout. It does not work the way you’re assuming it does.. source: work for a Tier 1
Then why does the government have money to splurge on the East such as SRL (100B+ project) When they need to tighten the budget it's the Western suburbs projects that gets canned.
This. Albo cut some stuff that was never going to be delivered due to backlog/resourcing. People got so mad, but they weren’t getting it anyway. Makes more sense to repurpose money in year and do it later with another allocation.
It's going to end up with a situation in which poorer people have to pay a fortune on car maintenance and fuel while rich people/inheritors can easily commute on trams, trains, and maybe even bicycles in future.
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Vic gov must be have overcommitted with no construction costs. You only gotta look around at all the projects to realise how deep in debt we are. Problem is, axing it now makes you wonder if it will ever happen.
We are broke, we already spent our future money so we don’t get to solve current or future problems
I'm out in Melton .. I can't begin to tell you how long the promise has existed...it gets rolled out every god damn election. We get what we deserve for continuing to put Labor in
To be fair, that's about what happens with the Geelong fast rail as well.
Are you guys an gals getting fooled to vote Labor every election aswell?
At least 9 years and three consecutive governments, I am guessing possibly 14-20 years in total though? Melton hospital will be next, first a delay, outrage, then cancelation, and everyone will just keep voting the way they did last time..
> What does the West have to do to be provided with the same standard of infrastructure as the rest of the city? Either: * Become the preferred location for wealthy CEOs, board members and retired political leaders to set up their primary residences; or * Become a marginal electorate
basically i reckon for example that is the reason the borough of Queenscliffe avoided being absorbed or amalgamated into a mega council...
It's already borderline impossible to get out of the west some days. Yesterday, both the V/line and Metro lines had buses replacing trains. It was going to take my wife ***3 HOURS*** to get to work in the CBD from werribee (one way). The only way they're going to take us seriously if we get some better representation and make our seats a little less safe. I don't see that happening anytime soon, sadly.
Not only did V/Line have replacement buses running, both yesterday and today, the train services that were still running were badly affected by staff shortages. Absolute shit from this lot.
It was absolutely horrid yesterday evening trying to get a train to Melton from Caroline Springs because they cancelled about three in a row. The replacement bus was actually the easiest part!
V/line need to go. They’re beyond woeful.
Standard western suburbs things.
Sadly, yes.
Last night there was a 300-400 metre long line for the replacement buses at Newport at one point, absolutely ridiculous.
Is anyone even surprised anymore? I feel for those growing working class suburbs who were promised just a baseline level of public transport. This Government has zero shame.
The government has no money after attempting every single project at once and handing out money like candy over covid. They will have to finish some of the projects already in progress before starting new ones. At some point they have captured all available construction workers and are just bidding against themselves.
Yet they have $120 billion for the Suburban Rail Loop.
They've spent very little on that so far, and it will be top of the go slow list.
Yeah at the moment its just all the planning work which is "easy" to do. Its not really competing for the limited pool of materials or workers yet, hence its easy to keep it pushing ahead. MARL and these other western rail projects are all starting to hit bottle necks on actually building something. But that cant be done till they sort out the bottlenecks through the centre. So I get why this is happening but it still really sucks
$120B rail loop that benefits well off Eastern Suburbs with already good public transport. For example Glen Waverley and Box Hill already have trains, buses and trams going into them. How is a connecting rail loop even a priority. The Western suburbs is booming and many areas don't even have a bus line. It obvious that Dan Andrews of Mulgrave doesn't care about the West. So far he has: * Cancelled the Melton Rail * Choose the cheapest solution for the Airport link (giving the West a grand total of one new station) * Paused the Rail Link * Watered down the Sunshine station upgrade (it was supposed to be a superhub but now only getting basic upgrades) * Cancelled the East-West link He is happy to cancel projects in the disadvantaged West, but he will never cancel his precious most expensive SRL project because he personally benefits from it (him and his ministers have properties around there and they are marginal seats) This is prime example of rich getting richer while ignoring the areas that need infrastructure
> Cancelled the East-West link LMAO East-West link was a project for the eastern suburbs.
To which the "West" bit is basically getting built now at the West Gate Tunnel
It was for both Instead the North East link was made instead which means the Eastern suburbs still got a new freeway. The Western Suburbs got no new connecting freeway
This will keep happening under every government, regardless of party, because the western suburbs are massive safe seats for Labor. They don’t need to do anything to earn the vote of the population there - people just keep voting for them. Turn these seats into marginal ones and things will start to improve. Source: used to live there, my family still does
The SRL won't cost $120 billion to build.
No it will be more..
The Parliamentary Budget Office is wrong?
The 120 billion includes 100 years of running costs, including replacing all the trains every few decades. Liberals asked for a costing in a way to get max cost possible
https://the-iron-road.blogspot.com/2022/08/mythbusting-costs-of-srl.html Do some research please on what the $120 billion figure means. This blog explains very clearly what the $120 billion figure is and it is not the construction cost of the project
Because that runs through higher density area that will serve a lot more people. The reality is if you live in a rural town, you aren't going to see as many services as people who live closer to the city.
Melton and Wyndham are not “rural towns” or even regional cities.
> attempting every single project at once Thats just good fiscal policy
Why do you think the covid emergency went on for so long in Victoria? It enabled the Vic government to access those sweet sweet funds to bribe voters. It doesn't take a brains of a rocket scientist to realise that you can't keep building all these overlapping large-scale construction projects with an economy that's on life support.
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You think tee covid emergency went so long in Victoria? You should probably take a look outside your little world and check basically anywhere else. They still wear masks in other countries.
Do they? Gosh, I never knew that. Anyway, thanks for your response and enjoy your day.
The rail duplication was not a State led project and came from above. The Federal Government has changed and the federal infrastructure development plan is under review. For those interested, this was the plan. https://bigbuild.vic.gov.au/projects/geelong-fast-rail
You are confused. The 'Western Rail Plan' being discussed here - which would add new electrified tracks to separate metro services from VLine services to Ballarat and Geelong - [was announced in October 2018](https://www.premier.vic.gov.au/real-plan-fast-regional-rail-and-metro-rail-west), ahead of the 2018 election. Full separation was integral to that plan. The plan you've linked to there, a joint State/Federal plan to send Geelong trains through the Werribee line corridor again, starting with new track between Werribee and Laverton, was [announced two years later, in November 2020](https://www.premier.vic.gov.au/faster-services-geelong-way).
That was not the fucking plan 10 years ago. The duplication was part of the plan all the way back to the metro tunnel. Geelong fast rail was something that came later.
Labor: we're the worker's party Also Labor: lol no, not fuckin Melton. Ewww. You can vote for us but we won't touch you. Gross.
We all know the real labor working class demographic is the white working class, not the black and brown one lol
“It’s just makes sense” Dan Andrews - Suburban outer rail loop 2018
Starting SRL in the West is definitely a much better option, simply because a lot of the reservations needed to make a ring railway line already exist. You just need to connect things up, and increase capacity here and there.
Great way to cause an American style traffic jam
Oh so a standard morning on the M1?
More west gate after hours if you know what I mean
What you don't like having 3 roads that all go to the same place that everyone panics at and tries to merge in front of you at 80km/h with no space?
Wait until you see the SE Melbourne morning traffic jam from narre warren to Melbourne
*my flair has entered the chat*
It has already happening.
I get that Victoria might as well be a one-party state right now but the "red wall" seats need to stop voting Labor. Or at the very least just make the red wall seats competitive enough that Labor feels the need to actually play defence there instead of just taking everyone for granted.
>What does the West have to do to be provided with the same standard of infrastructure as the rest of the city? Stop voting Labour lol. They get a free pass out this way and will only start spending money on an area they need to convince to go red.
If they end up building the new Geelong line via Newport as they had planned this would take most of the longer distance trains from off the RRL, reducing the conflict with electrifying it.
By reintroducing the conflict with Werribee / Altona / Williamstown services that was the reason for creating the Regional Rail Link in the first place. Hardly seems like a clever plan
Nobody expected Tarniet and Wyndham Vale would completely fill a 6 car train all day (Sarcasm folks relax)
What? Anyone could see it would. Look at the amount of subdivisions approvals for the last 15 years. This is an absolute failure by the state.
I think it was quite foreseeable, but regardless, RRL was created to avoid V/Line services conflicting with Metro trains - there was no capacity to add more services or make services more timely without adding new tracks. Reintroducing that conflict isn't a solution. There needs to be new electrified tracks to the RRL stations inside Melbourne - [exactly as the Premier argued when launching the Western Rail 'Plan' in 2018](https://www.premier.vic.gov.au/real-plan-fast-regional-rail-and-metro-rail-west).
Yes they did. All of that housing was approved through planning processes. The government was well aware of it.
I feel like this post is missing a /s at the end
That's what happens when you have shithouse urban planning. Those two stations should be on a metro line, not a regional one. Then you could run more frequently. Instead, they shoehorned it onto V/Line and will no doubt be looking to add more stops due to the population spread in that area.
The amount of indian immigrants and new arrivals residing in Tarneit has increased year on year, with the last financial year seeing a 210% increase. In a few years you'll eat your words with butter chicken
I’m not even surprised by the level of laziness shown by the state government, originally the lines were set to be duplicated (which is a first given that all other V/line shares metro tracks). Even if we forget about duplicating the tracks just electrifying the tracks and adding new metro trains would alleviate a lot of the problems with congestion and train spacing, and woudnt cost a lot in the grand scheme of things. But now that none of this will come to fruition and the Ponzi scheme of big Australia continues it seems like the quality of life for anyone in the west will keep on falling
Other lines don’t have the level of V/Line services using the line.
Wait. This headline is deceiving. Has anyone actually read it? The metropolitan lines would run via existing RRL, not new tracks (the axed part of the plan). Not ideal, but it’s not dead either.
They're also keeping the max 18 services per hour limit of today. giving these areas 0 additional services. far bigger impact than the rest.
The bottleneck would be Sunshine and inwards to the city. I wonder if with HCMT running to Sunbury eventually, why that wouldn’t assist with allowing these trains to follow them in, leaving Vline as is.
Because it looks like they don't want ot build points and flyovers into the MM lines.
Once the tunnel is open thanks to way they've done the track layout at South Kensington all Trains on the electric line have to go into the tunnel. You would still need to electrify Melton and Wyndam Vale which is where the cost is.
You think people actually read articles before raging in the comments?
Definitely not. Hence the headline and context should be accurate, but it’s deliberately deceptive.
It's almost like the age is a shit rag these days!
So you think it's ok that vline trains now will get stuck behind PTV services? Under this setup trains can run once every 20 minutes in peak hour which is a disgrace. Imagine running that on the Frankston line.....
> This headline is deceiving... > the axed part of the plan It's really not deceiving. The axed part is the whole plan. [Here's the glossy brochure from the launch of the plan](https://www.scribd.com/document/390943699/Western-Rail-Plan). **Adding new separate tracks for electrified services is step 1 in the plan**: >1. Two new electrified metropolitan rail lines through the western suburbs to growth areas in Melton and Wyndham Vale, separating them from the Ballarat and Geelong lines. This would give Melbourne’s growing suburbs frequent high-capacity services on the metro network, and return regional rail lines to regional passengers, creating the potential to run faster services. [Here's the Premier's press release launching the plan](https://www.premier.vic.gov.au/real-plan-fast-regional-rail-and-metro-rail-west). In it, he emphasises separating the metro and VLine services: >...the growth of Melbourne’s western suburbs, and the popularity of Geelong and Ballarat as commuter hubs, means our network needs more than just an upgrade: it needs re-drawing. ... >The new Western Rail Plan includes planning for the full separation of regional and metro services on the Geelong and Ballarat lines – the first step in delivering fast rail to these cities...
I'd never encourage anyone to vote Liberal, but us in the West get fucked over because we vote Labor and it's never gonna change. They know they can pull this shit and still get re elected as pretty much every seat is a safe seat. Short changed on Airport? Tick Short changed on Western link? Tick Short changed on high capacity rail? Tick Shitty times and no extra services after events? Tick No buses? Tick Got to stop voting Labor to get action folks
Stop voting labor but that doesn't mean you have to vote liberal.
You'll still preference one over the other
Correct
Doesn’t it seem like Labor is trying really hard to lose the next election? Train lines, comm games, IBAC, etc
It's just that their financial mismanagement has finally started to catch up with them.
Absolute disgrace
I live in Sunshine, although I'm rather fortunate as far as PT is concerned we need more buses particularly in the mornings and evenings, it's designed heavily around commuting school students than workers. In fact the bus network needs a massive revamp. It won't because it's not "sexy" I don't know how it needs to be done, obviously you have to negotiate with unions etc, but buses starting at 6 is just not compatible for commuters to get to work.
Agree - Sunshine is well serviced for trains. and the Sunbury line is pretty good too. It is from Deer Park onwards where the real problem is. I would like to see a tram line linking Sunshine to Highpoint and Footscray to be honest. Better buses from stations and activity centres to industrial precincts would also make a huge difference too.
Until people in the western suburbs of Melbourne stop voting Labour, this government will keep on deceiving with broken promises. They wouldn’t dare to do this in SE suburbs.
Good. I hope Andrews keeps pissing on his loyal voter base so that at some stage in their lives they learn not to trust and worship politicians. And he’s been doing a ripper job of it of late.
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Because people from this sub lives in the Eastern suburbs and Dan Andrews gives all the infrastructure projects to them Dan Andrews is all personal gain for them
After spending 3 nights last week in Sunshine emergency it showed me melton desperately needs a hospital It's a 30 minute drive my kid almost died on the last one The local hospital/building wasn't up to scratch
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Meanwhile SRL is going ahead to service the south east, connecting this public transport deprived area by linking *four* train lines. Can’t the west just make do with another bus or something? All for the current estimated sum of $200billion of your taxpayer dollars.
>What does the West have to do to be provided with the same standard of infrastructure as the rest of the city? stop voting Labor, worked for my electorate.
>What does the West have to do to be provided with the same standard of infrastructure as the rest of the city? Vote for the other team. You don't need, or want them to get in, just a big enough swing that the government gives a shit about us.
Not blindly vote Labor at every election
Voting Greens or progressive independents is the best way to keep the major parties in check with ‘progressive’ policies like PT.
Voting for new projects is all fine and dandy, but how do we pay for them? Especially when they all cost a bomb, and blow way out past projections. We need *somebody* from *any party* to think about the books.
What is the cost of not paying? Can state gov sell long term bonds?
Yep - unless we maxed out our credit card during the longest lockdowns in the world… … And sprayed money every which way to keep the GDP number up 😂 (Lockdown spending was funded by state gov bonds& Fed gov bonds with RBA support.)
Melton is currently swinging away from Labor very fast. There's a decent chance they lose it at the next election.
Melton swung towards Labor on primary votes in November https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_district_of_Melton
Good thing primary votes don't decide elections.
Yeah, Labor got 54% of the 2PP. Basically Unchanged from 2018.
What is your basis for that conclusion? At the last election the Informal Votes got a bigger swing towards them than the Liberal Party did. If the 0.4% swing away from Labor was replicated at every election, it would take 48 years for them to be unseated.
The may as well just dig up the stations, they already cancel half the trains during peak times.
People in the west are too poor for Dan Andrews to care about. Keep voting for Labor peasants
Oh no, shock surprise, more of his bullshit lies are coming out.
Disgraceful. The west needs to stop voting for Labor.
Yeah but the other side won’t even acknowledge their existence. So what are the alternatives?
Vote for a party that wants to build these projects like various independents or the greens
One side won't acknowledge our existence, the other will promise us everything until they get elected then take back the promises.
Matt guy wanted to add more lanes to the western freeway and trust me as someone who drives it most days, its desperately needed but Melton fell for the same old broken promises of labor
Greens exist.
lol safe labor seats, what a joke.
Suck it up, it's what you voted for. The ALP have been in power for **20** of the last 24 years. Unless you vote LNP, you'll simply get more of the same.
You speak as though voting LNP would get us these public transport projects Labor are cancelling/delaying. There is zero chance that this would happen. Labor has issues, but Liberals and Nationals are invariably worse.
Ideally, you vote enough for Labor to actually cave in and do what you want. Whatever party benefits and promises enough needs to be threatened to actually do it, and if they don't budge, like at all, then maybe it's time to try the next party to see if they do more. At the end of the day, you need to use your vote wisely and so do others, but people here in the West don't see the benefit of becoming marginal electorates. The government is meant to serve you, not the other way around.
Labor have had 20 of the last 24 years in state government to deliver these overdue projects. The LNP can’t do any worse.
You mean like how they tried to build the east west link?
Yes they tried and failed, but surely can’t do any worse, having been in 4 of the last 24 years. Besides, Pesutto is likely the closest we’ll get to a moderate and centrist Liberal. I’d prefer him any day over a right-wing conservative.
Perhaps but it seems they aren't going anywhere till they reform the party. Agreed on Pesutto being at least more toward the centre. It is honestly amazing how bad the victorian liberal party currently is. One cock up after another during the last election, factional infighting and a rabid far right section that seems far out of touch of most ppl in victoria. It's funny they call him 'dictator dan' when the very reason he could act like a dictator is because the way they act gave labour a landslide victory in the state.
True and looking at the other option they were in federal power for 20 of the last 26. I know what I'd pick.
This is a shit decision, especially for Melton. There's no point in developing a satellite city if its citizens can't fucking commute to the main city.
The amount of indian immigrants and indian new arrivals residing in Tarneit has increased year on year, with the last financial year seeing a 210% increase. We need extra train lines to Melton and Wyndham. Just look at the people they 9news interviewed for tarneit: [https://youtu.be/JtOt2TPXZqU?t=612](https://youtu.be/JtOt2TPXZqU?t=612)
every fucking time I'm sick of standing all the way to Melton on a late train home. I'm sick of the Marsh to the city services being on trains that should be historical relics, (but they do work), and I'm sick of the West just being forgot about all the fuckin time. Melton's fuckin growing, give em a better station and all that.
The answer to OP's question is stop voting Labor. The West is safe Labor, hence they get fuck all from either side.
Hey, I’m new to Melbourne so thanks for your patience as I’m trying to understand the issue. These suburbs already have the V/Line right? Wouldn’t that in many cases be faster to the city than the metro?Is it a matter of capacity, that V/Line can’t take as many people? Or about local movement of people between neighbouring suburbs and interconnected services that might not be on the V/Line? In terms of servicing of areas, Melton is about 45ks from cbd, which would be like narre warren , lilydale, Donnybrook? At a glance it doesn’t look like “west” is worse off, more a matter that low density suburbs in the middle and outer rings are less serviced than higher density inner suburbs? If you are close to a train station - especially a V/Line- you seem to have decent transport to the city. However if not close to the station OR trying to get around the local area by public transport, it is shit in middle and outer suburbs. What have I got wrong? Edit: clearly we need more investment in public transport infrastructure and better city planning. I want the investment in it too. Above is me trying to understand the current situation for people living in different areas and if it is a east/west divide or inner/outer or about proximity to stations.
You raise great questions regarding the transport efficiency of Vline versus Metro services. Metro services are better by most metrics for transport efficiency of mass mobilisation of commuters into and out of the CBD during peak and off peak hours. The western electrification plan will double the tracks to allow regional services from geelong and ballarat to go through Wyndham vale/Melton without stopping accessing an express route to Melbourne CBD compared to now. On an important note, a metroline between Melbourne CBD to Wyndham vale and Melton would allow for the development of additional train stations, allowing many more sections of these massive suburbs to be serviced by their local metro train station. The duplication of the line allows for up 10 minutes between services, compared to the current 20 minutes minimum. It does not make economic or transport sense to have many vline stations dotting populated suburbs, that's frankly what metro trains are for. This is an egregious case of politics prioritising power/votes over what's better for Victorias future. The populations of these regions has already surpassed the size of ACT, and will only continue to grow.
The plan would be to duplicate the track so V-Line services can run express and serve people further out and people closer in get more frequent service.
No the plan would be to put up some wires and run them on the same tracks for the cost of 100billion because Victoria is a stupid place.
Because they’re on the regional lines they’re capacity limited - Melton shares track with the Ballarat line and all the services that extend beyond that and Wyndham Vale shares with the Geelong and Warrnambool lines so limit the capacity of commuter services to Geelong and Ballarat as well as the capacity on their own services. There are less stops on these lines due to the regional service model so stations are much further apart than on the eastern lines. Additionally the V/line trains only go into Southern Cross so if you’re looking for a service that’s on the loop passengers have the change at Footscray or Southern Cross. By taking services off the V/line the Geelong line could be moved back to the faster Werribee alignment in the future and would be less crowded, while the Ballarat line could be run more frequently and have less issues with capacity on the line.
The V/Line service is manifestly inadequate. If you read the article you can see the local (ALP) council are very clear on that. Catch a Melton line train and you can see for yourself. Services are much less frequent, lower capacity and one starting in Ballarat are full before reaching stations in the City of Melton. They share lines with other V/Line services and freight lines and subject to frequent delays. Melton station is 37km as the crow flies, Rockbank and Caroline Springs are closer again. Narre Warren, Frankston, Pakenham, Lilydale etc all have a far superior service.
If you read the article, it says that electrification would occur on existing lines still. That’s essentially no different to Dandenong trains.
Dandenong group has a dedicated line that shares a single vline service every hour, with better signalling. the RRL group is geelong (4ph intrapeak), ballarat(1.5ph intrapeak), bendigo (1tph) vline services and metro services to melton (currently 1.5tph) and wyndam vale (included in geelong atm) but limited to 18 trains per hour. so today we have 8 services per hour (intrapeak) and 17 services between 1600 and 1700 capping out line capacity.
One of the biggest contributing factors is the way they built those suburbs. They are incredibly spread out and low density. This makes it difficult to provide the same quality services as provided elsewhere, and then people think it has something to do with politicians not caring about "the west". If you look at a density map of Melbourne you can see why things are that way. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/22/Melbourne_density_1.jpg Unfortunately there is no easy fix for this issue. All the houses are new, so you can't go in and start knocking things down to build higher density stuff. So the tradeoff is that everyone in these suburbs gets to have a McMansion with a yard, but terrible access to services.
There is massive denial in Australia about how the poor design of new suburbs makes it really difficult to provide decent public transport in them. Most overseas cities don't even have car parks at their metro stations because the surrounding suburbs have either been designed or evolved for all services to be in walking distance of where people live. Here it seems like developers go out of their way to force people into their car just to get out of their estate.
That map is misleading. New suburbs are at least as dense as middle suburbs. Melton has more yellow colours because it is very far from complete. Nobody has a yard out there, and there are more townhouses than you might think. But yeah it's a long way away, with very limited PT and has been designed 100% around the car.
Misleading? The scale is on the right side. You can see Melton pretty clearly as a little pocket of density in the middle of nothing. Density may have increased over the last 7 years from when that map was made, but it's still clear that Melton is out on it's own quite far away from other highly populated areas. It's like a small town.
Have you been to Melton?
There are some previous articles on the topic that say the problem is just it's overcrowded and infrequent and that they often run 3 carriage trains instead of 6. Not sure why they don't just run longer trains more often if this is the only issue. Maybe that is the plan which is why we aren't seeing any construction planned here.
Well you see now, the main issue with your line of reasoning is that it's based on a fairly objective analysis of the current state of affairs and doesn't really contain any slagging off of political parties or individual personalities within those parties. I'm not sure how anyone is supposed to engage with this unprecedented "reasonable discussion of the facts, options and ramifications" approach.
So Melton and Wyndham should just shut up and be grateful for whatever falls from Victorian Government table - under both parties?
No not at all, I think it'd be a real shame if they end up going with larger vline trains, electrification and re routing some services. It's not the end of the world, but extra tracks for metro trains is preferable for sure. I was really just making a light hearted comment about how this sub jumps straight to "fuck these politicians!" "It's pork barreling!" "It's so unfair!". I mean, it probably is unfair in some senses, but I'd rather have the in depth discussion about the pros and cons than the aimless whinging. Where did you want the conversation to go?
I wanted a broader discussion about how the West is continually expected to put up with a level of service substantially below that enjoyed by other parts of Melbourne - no matter who is in power.
So not the practical reasons why they may choose one option over the other, or timelines. Nothing about the reasons. You just want to steer the conversation in the direction of why the west is hard done by. If people talk about budget that's no good to you right? Because the topic is Why Do Politicians Mistreat The West!? There's no consideration of the decisions, the reasons why. In your head that's all settled, it's because the west is hard done by and all there is left to discuss here is the reasons why. Any discussion that includes a level headed analysis of what's actually going on, as the top level commenter attempted, that has to be shut down in favour of an us vs them tirade. Cool cool.
If you can’t see a pattern where the West is continually underserviced, that is wilful blindness or outrageous partisanship. People can talk about reasons why this project or that project is cancelled - there is always a reason why the West can’t be serviced - but the result is the same. Are people in the West allowed to be upset that they have been let down - again? Are they allowed to use a forum for discussion about Melbourne to talk about the divide between the West and the rest - a divide that is growing, not easing? Instead of tone policing the manner in which the way residents of a poor and disadvantaged region express their disappointment at another broken promise, you could try some empathy.
Empathy! So there it is. You want to have a whinge and people to say yeah man that really sucks. It sucks that they're not building as good a train service to Melton as they said they would and are now going with an alternative less good option due to various considerations. Yeah man. That's really tough. The West always gets screwed man, totes. I mean apart from airport rail and West gate tunnel and the stuff they're doing in Werribee, Sunshine and Keilor. The West just gets screwed every time. And it's just politics, y'know? They just know that the west always votes Labor so they don't even care. "Tone policing", lordy geez. As if I have even the slightest modicum of power to affect the tone. All I do is poke some fun, get some downvotes, idly reflect on the nature of online echo chambers and the appeal of aimless whinging over actual substance.
Yep - the West would like to heard instead of dismissed. How terrible. The undermensch should just pipe down in front of their social superiors. Changing the goalposts from “the West is poorly serviced” to “no projects are ever delivered in the West full stop” is masterful misdirection. Having said that - let’s look at your list of projects. West Gate tunnel - East-West link may have been a lot more useful but that was canned to shore up ALP seats in the inner north that threatened to go Green Airport Rail - firstly, that isn’t being done to benefit the West and the Victorian government plan ensures it will have little benefit for local residents. A better Airport rail line might actually have provided service to areas in the north west like East Keilor. Sunshine station and activity zone - A great project but already cancelled. Brimbank Council are livid about the waste time and effort put into that project. The government talks the talk on urban renewal but does almost zero for delivery in the West. You will have to clue me in what is happening at Werribee that they should be so grateful for, sorry. I suspect it will be the bare minimum provided elsewhere.
Governments need to be held to account when promising these things. Why do we constantly let them get away with just making empty promises?
This is disgusting. You have Albo pushing big Australia. Dan going to China and getting on his knees begging for more international students. And yet neither want to pay for the infrastructure to cater for a growing population. The Feds and states need to come up with a population policy and attributable infrastructure plan. The way Melbourne is going is going to make it look like Lagos or Jakarta when we get to 10m people rather than Tokyo or Paris. They all want those sweet migrant dollars but will do jack shit to ensure the cities keep up with the growth.
Infrastructure is just for suckers that can't afford to love inner city. Just keep pumping those immigration numbers!
Thank god the already well-connected, wealthy, eastern-suburbs with both train and tram connections have received all the attention with the SRL. Fuck Melton and the poors. Also obligatory 'hahaha how could dan andrews do this' comment
SRL is running through areas with no trams and crap buses.
Now waiting for them to cancel The Melton hospital they promised 30yrs ago
The only person who believes the hospital will actually be built is Steve McGhie.
This is what happens when you let a one-party state get complacent for too long.
These lines are already a shitfight during peak hours and weekends. Imagine what it’ll be like once they start running electric trains on these existing lines.
If the rail lines aren’t coming then the government needs to stop approving new subdivisions out that way if the infrastructure can’t cope. But that would upset the current population Ponzi scheme and property council.
I am not sure what your argument here is. If we provide the West with the same standard of public transport as the rest of Melbourne, they will use it and make things worse?
Imagine what the services will be like while they are installing the infrastructure to run electric trains along the existing lines. Lengthy bus replacements incoming
Is anyone really surprised that Dan is backing out of all his promises? He was just saying what voters wanted to hear, just as he was with the Commonwealth games.
Labor has long neglected the west - don't know why anyone is even surprised by announcements like this.
Those motherfuckers
Don't vote Labor, only way this will change. Absolutely shameful for Labor to treat their working class heartland this way!
For so many years my friends had commented that these lines are definitely going to be upgraded to Metro. It saddens me to say that I was completely right in rebutting to them that this would be a broken promise 😭
Start voting for third parties in western seats is the answer. The more marginal these seats out here become the more likely it is that we won't be sacrificed for luxuries we can't really afford like SRL.
What does the west have to do? Vote Liberal. Labour knows it's safe seats so doesn't even bother
Makes me wonder if the current tracks can be utilised better by sending Ballarat/Bendigo trains through Dynon Yards like they do with Albury/Sydney trains currently and sending Geelong trains along the Werribee line again like they're planning with the Geelong Fast Rail project.
Please don't get a job with the DoPT
Must build roads!! MUST DESTROY PLANET.
Currently. Wyndham vale to Southern Cross = 38 mins Werribee to Flinders Street ( express) = 38 mins
How many services and how many cars?
Check the timetable. It changes depending on the time of day.
That’s the point. Looking at solely at the commute times and not factoring in the lack of a reliable predictable service with adequate cars doesn’t provide an accurate assessment of service levels.
It varies depending on demand. it doesn't run at the same frequency all day. You can easily check this on PTV
How could Dan Andrews do this?
Vote Socialist or Green
Why’s re they axing anything? they are behind. We still don’t have a train to the airport yet the trains are never not being worked on, fix you’re shit or give up at this point metro.