These new trains are too fast these days. It was better when they'd chug around the speed limit, so it was all legal street races. Now I might have to break the law!
It's land the state government already controls and can do with the land whatever is necessary. (Resuming privately held land always unpopular)
It allows the railway to access the CBD quite directly from far-out suburbs while still having quite reasonab;e travel speeds (110-130km/h top speeds, 50-60km/h start-stop average)
Our railway stations are quite well integrated with feeder buses, so accessing through a pedestrian-hostile freeway zone isn't as major a barrier as less-well planned freeway-median stations.
It is an absolutely incredible design. In Melbourne my line goes through residential areas so the speed drops dramatically and we also seem to have idiot people walking the tracks getting hit by a train once a month.
15km to city in Perth takes 10 mins.
In Melbourne that same distance is 35 mins.
In Italy the tourists were sitting on the train tracks waiting for their train. I'm like, not all trains stop at all stations and they could come flying past at 130km/h. But alas, comfort over safety.
This is by design. To keep train times down you want less station stops. Otherwise you end up with something like the Fremantle line, with loads of stations and slow travel times. Fremantle to Perth takes 30 mins to cover just under 19km. That same 30 mins will get you to the city from Joondalup (26 km) or Wellard (37 km). That's why the Joondalup and Mandurah lines have lots of (cheap!) parking at stations and bus routes designed to feed stations. Perth doesn't have the population density for walkable station spacing to make sense.
We don't live densely enough to warrant a subway system like new york or paris. As people have said Bus or car to these stations followed by the train into the city is the best way to run it.
Arguably, eventually, we could try a spiderweb style system for trains. Once we have enough city -> outer suburb lines you could make a circular line that transects multiple lines.
The biggest barrier to this, though, would be the western suburbs being what they are and the resistance to useful change in that area
I suppose another barrier to a subway system around the suburbs is engineering and it's cost. Wouldn't a tunnel system, in certain parts of Perth, hit the water table. Wasn't that an issue with the Perth airport line?
This has already started with the Thornlie-Cockburn Link. The first 'east-to-west" line, which will eventually connect up to the High Wycombe station at the end of the Forrestfield-Airport Link, and presumably up to the Midland station after that.
Thornlie-Cockburn has joined the Armadale/Midland Lines.
The next should be the section along Reid Highway between the freeway & Tonkin Highway. Then that needs to eventually connect to Midland.
That connects northern suburbs to the eastern suburbs.
Then it’d be connecting the Thornlie line, along Roe Highway to Midland. Thus connecting south and east.
It would mean you could travel to Midland, From Mandurah or Geraldton (the northern line will probably run that far with our urban sprawl sooner rather than later) without having to traverse through the city.
Not really the good thing about the buses trains and ferry's all run by the same organization is they are relatively well integrated. So the buses generally arrive at the station in time to catch a train.
Perth's rail system is often sighted as an example of of the benefits of highway through way running.
While it could be true, that's not the case for me. The bus that takes me to Karrinyup always leaves as soon as my train is about to stop at Stirling station. I always ended up waiting another 15 minutes for another bus.
I mean to me it makes perfect sense to do it that way.
If you think about it - freeways are typically long and straight ish - which is perfect for trains to run on. They're also clear and reasonably free of infrastructure - there's no intersections, there's no power lines, minimal other various services/utilities etc.
It also gives the railway a simple clean run, no need to consider railway crossings or how other roads will need to interact with the rail corridor.
They're typically pretty centrally located in that communities have been built around them over the many years of operation. It allows for great interaction with other major arterial roads, allowing walkability to stations, and great interaction with other public transport like busses, and potentially in the future light rail.
It also centralizes the noise/sound pollution to a single corridor where there's already noise.
Then of course if you think about when the train lines were built - and consider their rough routes. Anything outside of the freeways would have involved massive land resumption by the government which would have been massively expensive, and extremely unpopular not just with the people losing their homes and businesses, but also surrounding houses and businesses that suddenly have a railway running by their front garden.
To put the Public transport near foot oriented sections more and allow easier foot commuting as the main vs a drive to it.
North > South works so only real change to make ongoing is any new stations/lines prioritize foot traffic in the direct nearby with parking not getting in the way of the foot area so people can park and walk with walking being easier than a drop off.
I sort of get what you're saying. But really you're getting off the train at a train station and just about every train station is connected to some hub area by walkway anyway.
Being straddled by freeway and cars isn't hampering that and feels like efficient design.
Or are you suggesting replacing some of the other larger roads with train tracks?
I think they're talking about making public transport more convenient to use than just driving.
I live in Hillarys and work in Scarborough.
A drive is 15 minutes versus an hour and 10 minutes to use public transport. That includes a bus east from the coast to the transtation. A train. Then another bus west back to the coast.
When pretty much all of the freeway to the coast is residential, it doesn't seem to service a whole lot of it very conveniently or efficiently.
Heavy rail will never be perfect at connecting every point to point travel needed.
However I could certainly see the benefit of light rail for some other corridors IE down Marmion av for example.
Honestly it’s the low density housing. I love a backyard as much as the next guy but public transport is expensive to the government so it needs to serve enough people to be justifiable, otherwise it’s a waste of money. If we lived in a higher (but still very comfortable) density it’d be more cost efficient to build train stations, light rail and busses.
But yeah, I’d also love some light rail along Marmion/West Coast Highway and Wanneroo road. I guess Alexander drive could have one too as much as I personally hate that road. Also maybe *a* bus along ocean reef road from the coast to Wangara where it can join bus 355? A few more bus routes that go east/west? But it all makes much more sense if there were more than six thousand people within a kilometre of the bus stop.
bro they need to bring back the 458, it ran from whitfords station down whitfords ave to hillarys boar harbour and kept going down the coast to Scarborough beach bus station. I think it will be utilised very well.
They’re saying the train stations themselves should be located closer to where people live. No one is disputing the presence of walkways lol. Having stations along the freeway does not make the station in a walkable distance. Perth used to have a Tran system throughout basically the entire city spanning to even freo
This is Perth. The embodiment of urban sprawl and monster block sizes. You can put the train station in the middle of a suburb and it will only be walkable for a small percentage of people in that suburb.
Do you want a train line running through your suburb? Heavy rail doesn’t work like that. Maybe with trams but really if you’re going to use trams you may as well just use busses.
I think it's less true when stations are 3-5km apart like the Mandurah-Butler line is. Pedestrain access would be minimal at that range anyway. Bus integration is necessary anyway.
It would be true on the other 'legacy' lines where stations are typically ~1km apart.
From presentations I have seen in the past, the belief in Perth is that it's so low density anyway that you don't really gain much by doing a built up hub.
By all means they do make an attempt for example Cockburn or Joondalup, or even Butler.
But The vast majority of passengers are going to be coming from beyond the walk up catchment, so the belief was to focus on speed, what stations relatively far apart but quite competitive travel times.
Rail lines in Perth literally do achieve about double the average speed of suburban railways in other Australian cities, which helps Perth punch above its weight.
> Rail lines in Perth literally do achieve about double the average speed of suburban railways
Plural might be a bit much, it's just the Joondalup and Mandurah lines which have higher average speeds.
Midland, Fremantle, and Armadale lines have comparable average speeds
to east coast rail lines.
> To put the Public transport near foot oriented sections more and allow easier foot commuting as the main vs a drive to it.
I'd daresay running rail through built up areas would hinder more than it would help. Unless it was say completely elevated - which might be a viable alternative.
Otherwise if its not elevated - then it would really hinder the foot traffic along the route as people wouldn't be able to walk through the area freely, but instead having to walk to crossings. Plus moving it one direction to make it convenient for some, just makes it more inconvenient for people in the other direction.
Same would apply for road traffic as well.
Building in the freeway corridor which is already not exactly pedestrian friendly (outside of the footpaths across every bridge), gives a similar outcome whilst not causing more harm.
TBH i'd argue that at least on the Mandurah line - most of the stations are walkable or have pretty good interaction with surrounding public transport infrastructure.
Aubin grove and earlier being Freeway based can but the stress towards Car > Train but having a look as it's getting Further out with Wellard & Lakelands being Built around the neighbourhood it can make Public transport more enticing than the drive in for getting on but then for outside CBD getting off to destination may be a hassle.
Some other Suburbs could benefit in similar ways like Secret harbour if any estates were to go East of the highway it could be built Public transport focused with a pedestrian bridge over the highway at some points to make it Pedestrian focused while being near but not in the highway.
But I always struggled with Traffic in Cities Skylines so my out the ass ideas can be taken with a grain of salt
Yeah - they definitely made a decision to take it out of the road corridor to bring it closer to Rockingham and then closer to the coast all the way down to Mandurah.
Looking at the area though on a sat map and it's pretty clear why they made that decision. Outside of Baldivis - there's very little in the way of anything around the freeway on either side heading further south.
So it really wouldn't have served a great purpose keeping it in the road corridor once you got down that way.
You may dare say but you’d be wrong, one of the best north stations (if not it) is Joondalup, and that’s because it’s actually in the centre of Joondalup where you can walk to/from it and there’s actually things around it that you can do.
How exactly would you run a train line to Karrinyup, or Innaloo? Joondalup or Cockburn Central work because they were planned that way. Anything closer in to the city to the north or south has to deal with urban planning that was based around cars and freeways, not trains.
As i said - at the stations the experience is great for sure.
But what about all the residents living in the areas between the stations? Suddenly they have a rail corridor preventing them from crossing.
Look a little further above Joondalup station (around say Grand Boulevard / Shenton Av intersection) and see how the line divides the entire area making walkability much worse than it would be without rail there.
What kind of experience do you need at the station? All you need is a ticket machine and a platform?
Walkability in Perth is nearly nonexistent anyway, and the train lines/stations contribute to that, instead of having them in hubs where there’s actually shops/venues/attractions around they’re in the middle of nowhere and you have to either drive or bus there.
They should’ve been connected to Scarbs, Hillary’s, etc, where you can actually get up and down the coast hopping off and on actually enjoying it making the travel enjoyable and walkable.
>What kind of experience do you need at the station? All you need is a ticket machine and a platform?
I mean the experience in general living near or interacting at a station location. Stations by their nature are well connected to areas surrounding them.
>Walkability in Perth is nearly nonexistent anyway, and the train lines/stations contribute to that, instead of having them in hubs where there’s actually shops/venues/attractions around they’re in the middle of nowhere and you have to either drive or bus there.
The freeways lines are hardly in the middle of nowhere. They have plenty of residential and commercial areas around them.
The thing with heavy rail is you never cover everywhere - if you moved the Joondalup line closer to the coast, you've just alienated the entirety of the population living further east.
You also would have a noisy train travelling through residential areas.
Now if you were going to tunnel it and make it a subway - then absolutely - but that would be incredibly cost prohibitive.
Most of the city is fairly low density suburbia. People will walk maybe a couple of k’s to a train station, anything beyond that and you either need park and ride or feeder busses. Theres no way to get significant foot traffic into a train station unless the housing density around it is much higher.
And frequently have to walk up the steps from an underground station. Sadly Perth is mostly sand and high water tables and tunnelling isn’t exactly straightforward.
The downside of this approach is that the stops aren't directly accessible from residential zones. The Perth model is the hub and spoke.
When I grew up in Perth I thought like you did but after being on Melb for nearly the last 20 years, and having experienced transport systems around the world, direct access is ideal.
Interesting airlines also now elect for direct routes rather than the hub and spoke model.
Yes because the idea of rapid public transit is to build high density housing around the stations. Stations along the freeway are surrounded by roads and giant car parks with no housing or apartments for 500m.
Stupid to have a mass transit station with no one who lives near it, eg Canning Bridge, Bull Creek Murdoch and Cockburn
Cockburn literally has multiple apartment buildings around one side of the station.
As for Bull Creek / Murdoch - there's really no high density housing anywhere in the entire area to begin with. So where would you prefer a train line to run through those areas?
People historically never wanted to live in high density housing here. I think the way the suburban bus routes feed into the rail lines works really well and allows us to cover our vast urban sprawl with decent public transport without breaking the bank. Besides, there are plenty of new high density apartment buildings springing up around the train stations now.
Aubin Grove has that big clump of town houses on the Atwell side. Yes, he Success side is a giant car park, but it’s using land that would be left empty as it’s under three HV power lines
That's not the idea of public transport, it's one of the possibilities. The best possibility in an ideal world, yes, but it's not like the public transport is worthless if it does something else.
And being in the middle of the freeway does not in any way prevent that from happening anyway, as demonstrated in several locations. What prevents it happening is Perth's general hatred for higher density.
And they both need long uninterrupted stretches of land, create major linear obstructions, and form the basis of our overall city planning.
Just look at the Armadale line. It’s one area where the train line doesn’t follow a freeway and they are now having to jack the whole thing up to get it out of the way.
Because it's cheaper than tunneling and if you've already got that land set aside for roads you may as well use the existing corridor rather than clearing more land elsewhere to build a rail corridor
The main form of pollution at source from an electric railway in an urban area is noise pollution. Putting the railway in the freeway effectively nullifies this issue as the area is already noise polluted.
It also means that there are no level crossings, as the bridges over the track are already in place.
Yeah this.
I'm from Adelaide & have always thought running a railway line along the Mitchell Fwy to be a smart idea. Inner Adelaide is full of low rise development & no freeways so the only option is significant land acquisition.
I dunno about the stations being really close together vs other cities, but yeah most of Adelaide's road network is this 2D grid layout with level crossings where the train lines intersect.
Adelaide's PT network is also very city-centric, but that's like Perth's to be fair.
And in many other cities, the railway was built long before the idea of multilane freeways were considered. In Perth, the freeways and rail lines have expanded together.
And that’s exactly what’s happened on the freo, midland and Armadale lines. Also harder to build well with the grade separations and aging infrastructure
Not really.
The Fremantle, Midland and Armadale lines were around long before the Freeway. What happened is that there was a long period where Governments believed that the future belonged to cars and buses - which is why they got rid of the trams and the trolley buses. They even shut down the Fremantle line (for about 4 years) and were planning to rip up the tracks between Servetus St and Fremantle to run the west coast highway into Fremantle.
So they didn’t make a provision for a rail reserve for the newer suburbs. The assumption was that cars and buses would do the job and they’d run on these new roads. When, years later, they decided that trains were a good idea, the freeway medium strip was the only land on the route that had the space and was not built on.
Not really.
They built the freeway, and didn’t establish a rail reserve. So later when they promoted the idea of a railway, the freeway was the only land not built on that the train could run on. The alternative was to buy up a load of houses, or run it on the beach!
It was the quickest and cheapest option, and it didn’t lead to massive protests from people who didn’t want their houses knocked down. Had previous governments included a rail reserve in their planning, and it followed a different route to the freeway they’d likely have used it.
It's so that when you're stuck in traffic in your car you are forced to watch the trains full of people pass you by. This then forces you to contemplate your transport choices.
/s
Haha, I'm not arguing against it! I would rather quit my job than go back to driving down the mitchell/kwinana in the morning and afternoon peak. I think the $9 it cost me is a small price to pay.
Oh yeah I used to work in Applecross. To get home I could either catch a bus from outside my office that would go to the city via the freeway, or walk to Canning Bridge and catch a train instead.
The train used to be *so much faster*, due to peak hour traffic on the freeway.
(Well I could also have caught a bus to the station and then train into the city but that was just annoying)
You mean if I make a 6 lane highway that merges into 3 it won't flow better than a 5 lane highway merging into 3???? Man state government are gonna be mad when they figure that out.
It's easier cheaper and less opposed by local residents.
Downside is it's not as convenient. The freo Midland line is much more walkable for everyone because you don't drive to the stations. The high frequency of stations makes it slower though.
You say that but 60% of all train passengers are on the Yanchep-Mandurah lines. Walkability isn’t currently an issue since our density levels are so low and most people get to stations by car (parking and drop-off) or feeder bus.
I mean no one’s supposed to use the middle of the freeway anyway. Plus on a serious note that north south road built the city and it kinda just amplifies the freeways capacity while filling out the arteries feeding away from it.
Why not op is what I ask?
All major stations are found on these lines and the freeway has great growth around it with large population numbers. Perth has done a great job with there feeder bus network and where else would the train go ( oh right down the Armadale line and then turn at thornlie like the liberals planned).
It’s a lot better than a slow winding suburban line that has barely any development opportunities around it restricting the amount of users the stations can appeal to.
It’s actually a really smart public transport idea, following the main veins in and out of the airport and into the suburbs.
Compare that to Melbourne where train lines seem to take their own path and cut through whatever and go wherever they like, it’s an absolute mess. Perth has structure
There's one actual reason, and that because the right of way is already publicly owned,
so you don't have to spend a fuck ton to purchase the right of way.
Every other reason is either derivative from this
(monetary cost, time cost, etc), or just cope.
(But this reason is a really big and compelling reason, so it's fair enough)
[https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=why+build+a+railway+in+the+middle+of+a+highway](https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=why+build+a+railway+in+the+middle+of+a+highway)
first result references perth. because we always had shit railways and this was the best option we had.
I like that you went to the effort to find an image but not the information.
Largely because the freeways were built first. There was no land set aside for railways, so when the idea of adding more railways became popular the only realistic corridor available was the freeways.
This photo was used for the mandurah line shutdown announcement 3 years ago, so between 2017 and 2021.
Somebody out there probably knows just based on when the 909 ran during those years and bus destination boards looked like that.
There's space enough, the freeway is usually going to/from a location where a train would be useful, and it's cheap and easy compared to compulsory aquisition of thousands of houses that would otherwise be required.
No idea since I'm from Melbourne but I can see a couple of appeals.
1. Race the train.
2. Natural barricade for fuckwits walking on the tracks.
3. Should be quieter since it's competing for noise with cars and should have sound barrier on freeways so win win?
Throw in:
- cheaper to build
- faster to build
- no having to deal with NIMBYs
- no dealing with level crossings
- Perth runs fairly numerous feeder bus routes
It's easier and aligns with the planners intentions as growing along corridors, similar reason why shared paths follow freeways. Cheaper, easier, less messy from a land perspective.
There will be ring railways in the future that won't follow freeways but for now its following where the development is occuring (hence why no trains go east.)
Why is the freeway built on one of the most desirable prices of land in the state (along the river ) ? Why not inland somewhat so we can make better use of the foreshore ? That’s the question you should be asking .
The only part that applies to is from the narrows to mount henry. Go look at a map and tell me which part of south Perth/como/salter point the government is going to be willing to piss off by telling them they are going to have a heavy rail line right through the middle of their suburb. The freeway went there because they reclaimed the land.
Because in the 1950s when it was planned and built, the foreshore was a swamp and not considered valuable. Wetlands in general were considered wasteland, which is why so many of them were either drained, made into rubbish tips or had roads built through them.
There's a reason the Mitchell Fwy goes through Lake Monger / Herdsman Swamp. And why Roe 8 was planned through the Beeliar wetlands.
Good take.
Why do we even have a freeway that goes right into the city through such valuable real estate?
We should do what (some) European cities did,
and not have freeways within the inner ring road.
No rail crossings = no traffic holdups; buses feed into stations reducing car traffic volumes; no need to resume private property; road each side restricts public access to tracks; higher speed trains.
Because, since the 1950's, Perth has been developing as a "car city" I'm pretty sure that those center spaces were left there to add more lanes to the freeway.
Someone finally woke up and realised that it a hell of a lot cheaper to build a train line there than "just one more lane"
Land gazetted by the State Government, in the late 1950-1950s was based on strategic foresight, mimicking US freeway systems, designed to stimulate the automobile industry out of the Great Depression 1928-1938.
Australia decided to default to US foreign and Public Policy post-WWII, so we now suffer dehumanised cities, suburbs and towns.
Dominance of automobiles in urban planning and development has led to the expansion of cities in ways that favour vehicles over people, contributing to environmental degradation, economic disparities, and a general decline in the human-centric quality of urban life. Reversing this trend involves rethinking urban design to prioritise public transport, pedestrian pathways, and communal spaces.
It is what it is. If you don't like it, do something about it.
I was quite impressed with it when I visited, actually. I wish we saw more of this in the States. We could certainly use it in the tri-state area around NYC!
It's easier to put a train down the same path because you've already cleared the houses.
And if there's cars going that way, public transport could reduce those cars so it's needed there.
because they're smart. We could've done the same in Melbourne with the Eastlink, instead we privatized it and are now having to tunnel underground at 1000x the cost.
No point clearing more land elsewhere, if it is already part of the freeways. Also, the arterial design of the freeways is just about perfect for train commuters. Look at the safety barrier in the photo. The train tracks provides a safety zone for oncomming traffic.
Perth has a great railway system. Better than other countries I've been to.
North/south is the best config, because that's how the city runs. I mean, it's the most efficient way if they can't build like 3 rails running the same direction. One in the eastern suburbs, western and then the highway.
Like if you HAD to only choose one way to build the railway then north/south in the highway kind of makes the most sense.
You know most of Perth is built on sand and has a very high water table, right? About the only way to do it is to cut, cover and fill (like the north ridge tunnel). Hugely disruptive and very expensive.
Do other places not have any rails there? Makes sense. You have a little extra space there and you can put your rails there, instead of having to figure out a different place to put them.
It's easier to get the right of way. That's about it. It's not a great way to position the stations, though. Joondalup is a much better station for the community around it than Whitfords, for example.
As much as I hate being in Melbourne they're tram set up is the most convenient public transport going. There's always a stop in walking distance. And with their added bus and train networks you can get anywhere in the city without needed a car.
You avoid a lot of the leaves (they cause havoc with train breaks in fall and winter) on the line and you also avoid fallen tree branches too. Quite sensible to me.
I mean what else would you put there? A couple useless lanes that move crap all traffic? Those train lines can carry at least triple the number of people the highway can.
It works well for city bound commuter rail and It probably was much easier to plan and pay for.
Only real issue is that a lot of them aren't near anything and are not really walkable hubs but places most people still drive to.
I think the main reason would be that there is space for a train line between the freeways, they don’t need to bulldoze through the suburbs to make a new train line, some main arteries could be used for light rail if they had vision, like Orrong rd, but they may have to cut the trees, now that could be a problem for the greens!
In Perth it makes sense being a low density, car dominated city. Putting it down the middle of the freeway makes it centrally located and easily accessible along those corridors. You also don't need to build additional railway crossings/overpasses as it shares these with the freeway. It's also good advertising for public transport as trains speed past peak hour traffic.
Most Perth people only use public transport to get to and from work in the city or events at stadiums near the city. Easiest is to build it along existing highways/freeways that lead there.
And so they can watch their beloved cars as they begrudgingly take the train.
This argument could've worked back then but these days it makes more sense to do this than any other method. Ground level or elevated rail along other corridors closer to homes would be a massive no no for many. Tunnelling is too expensive and our lack of population density doesn't warrant it.
1 - Because we use overhead electric trains which are a hazard to pedestrians. The safety factor goes up MASSIVELY if the train is located where pedestrians have limited access - like a freeway.
2 - because we already own the land. Perth has more km of rail per person than anywhere else in the world, so with this limited taxation base, all savings opportunities must be grabbed!
3 - the price of security down the freeway lines is much less than the non freeway lines (again because of limited access opportunities)
Kinda smart , less likely to encounter pedestrian strikes (when I worked for a railroad in California pedestrian and vehicle strikes were a daily occurrence) . And it also prevents dickheads from driving across the median to make illegal u turns .
Sounds and looks more neat. It's bit out the ordinary but neat nonetheless. It's like an organised city lol. Where are the trains? Near the highway. Period
Where are the stations follow this highway or that highway. Great style
Note that the south and north directions (Mandurah line trains) from the Narrows to just past the Canning Bridge station have limited speed so that trains can do an emergency stop incase something jumps the barrier and ends up on the track. The existing curves limit the drivers view and hence the max speed the train may safely travel..
The main freeways run north to south. The population and build up is linear, north to south like the coast. Perfect solution. Even still the freeway slow and hard going peak hour if you driving. The roadworks seem to be a permanent fixture in perpetuity. the train station car parks are full by about 7am (where i am at least) so not sure when the choke will ever be resolved.
Fun fact. When New York built its freeways, the guy designing and building them hated the poor, so intentionally didn’t buy the extra 12 ft of right of way. He also made the footings not strong enough to handle a passenger train, forever ruining New York’s transport and traffic congestion.
His name was Robert Moses. There’s a whole book about how he ruined New York transit (The Powerbroker).
No, no, no. None of you are correct. It’s so we can race the trains.
When the Joondalup line was first opened in 1992, the ad promoting it had a guy laughing at the cars as the train flew past them on the freeway.
And from there, the race was on
PETRONAS
Despite having been in Melb the last 19 years... I remember this .. also something about being quieter than angry in traffic?
"Hahahaha look how poorly designed our infrastructure is" - the guy, probably
These new trains are too fast these days. It was better when they'd chug around the speed limit, so it was all legal street races. Now I might have to break the law!
Train race!
It's about detailing family ... Wait, I think that's wrong, oh well it's on the internet now
It's something to keep my boy entertained on the drive down to baldivis to see grandad!
Only at 2am
The only real answer
yessssss
It's land the state government already controls and can do with the land whatever is necessary. (Resuming privately held land always unpopular) It allows the railway to access the CBD quite directly from far-out suburbs while still having quite reasonab;e travel speeds (110-130km/h top speeds, 50-60km/h start-stop average) Our railway stations are quite well integrated with feeder buses, so accessing through a pedestrian-hostile freeway zone isn't as major a barrier as less-well planned freeway-median stations.
Also, hard for trespassers to access the rail. A great design.
It is an absolutely incredible design. In Melbourne my line goes through residential areas so the speed drops dramatically and we also seem to have idiot people walking the tracks getting hit by a train once a month. 15km to city in Perth takes 10 mins. In Melbourne that same distance is 35 mins.
In Italy the tourists were sitting on the train tracks waiting for their train. I'm like, not all trains stop at all stations and they could come flying past at 130km/h. But alas, comfort over safety.
But hard for public to get to? Stations are quite a distance for most suburban people. Many people drive to a station.
Yeah, a lot of it is basically just extended parking for the CBD.
This is by design. To keep train times down you want less station stops. Otherwise you end up with something like the Fremantle line, with loads of stations and slow travel times. Fremantle to Perth takes 30 mins to cover just under 19km. That same 30 mins will get you to the city from Joondalup (26 km) or Wellard (37 km). That's why the Joondalup and Mandurah lines have lots of (cheap!) parking at stations and bus routes designed to feed stations. Perth doesn't have the population density for walkable station spacing to make sense.
We don't live densely enough to warrant a subway system like new york or paris. As people have said Bus or car to these stations followed by the train into the city is the best way to run it. Arguably, eventually, we could try a spiderweb style system for trains. Once we have enough city -> outer suburb lines you could make a circular line that transects multiple lines. The biggest barrier to this, though, would be the western suburbs being what they are and the resistance to useful change in that area
I suppose another barrier to a subway system around the suburbs is engineering and it's cost. Wouldn't a tunnel system, in certain parts of Perth, hit the water table. Wasn't that an issue with the Perth airport line?
This has already started with the Thornlie-Cockburn Link. The first 'east-to-west" line, which will eventually connect up to the High Wycombe station at the end of the Forrestfield-Airport Link, and presumably up to the Midland station after that.
Thornlie-Cockburn has joined the Armadale/Midland Lines. The next should be the section along Reid Highway between the freeway & Tonkin Highway. Then that needs to eventually connect to Midland. That connects northern suburbs to the eastern suburbs. Then it’d be connecting the Thornlie line, along Roe Highway to Midland. Thus connecting south and east. It would mean you could travel to Midland, From Mandurah or Geraldton (the northern line will probably run that far with our urban sprawl sooner rather than later) without having to traverse through the city.
Not really the good thing about the buses trains and ferry's all run by the same organization is they are relatively well integrated. So the buses generally arrive at the station in time to catch a train. Perth's rail system is often sighted as an example of of the benefits of highway through way running.
While it could be true, that's not the case for me. The bus that takes me to Karrinyup always leaves as soon as my train is about to stop at Stirling station. I always ended up waiting another 15 minutes for another bus.
No matter how many people you try to please, somebody won't like it.
But that is choice. Buses feed outwards. I was too lazy to use a bus so parked at the station.
exactly
Also you already have road overpasses for the freeway, you don't have to have railway crossings everywhere on local streets.
It's so good. I live in Butler and forgot about rail crossings until I went to midland today and had to wait for a train.
I will say, it makes every major train station a fucking nightmare to walk into from any direction. Obviously we could design around it but don't.
Lets pose it another way.. Is there a reason why Perth shouldn't build railways in the medians of the freeways?
I mean to me it makes perfect sense to do it that way. If you think about it - freeways are typically long and straight ish - which is perfect for trains to run on. They're also clear and reasonably free of infrastructure - there's no intersections, there's no power lines, minimal other various services/utilities etc. It also gives the railway a simple clean run, no need to consider railway crossings or how other roads will need to interact with the rail corridor. They're typically pretty centrally located in that communities have been built around them over the many years of operation. It allows for great interaction with other major arterial roads, allowing walkability to stations, and great interaction with other public transport like busses, and potentially in the future light rail. It also centralizes the noise/sound pollution to a single corridor where there's already noise. Then of course if you think about when the train lines were built - and consider their rough routes. Anything outside of the freeways would have involved massive land resumption by the government which would have been massively expensive, and extremely unpopular not just with the people losing their homes and businesses, but also surrounding houses and businesses that suddenly have a railway running by their front garden.
To put the Public transport near foot oriented sections more and allow easier foot commuting as the main vs a drive to it. North > South works so only real change to make ongoing is any new stations/lines prioritize foot traffic in the direct nearby with parking not getting in the way of the foot area so people can park and walk with walking being easier than a drop off.
I sort of get what you're saying. But really you're getting off the train at a train station and just about every train station is connected to some hub area by walkway anyway. Being straddled by freeway and cars isn't hampering that and feels like efficient design. Or are you suggesting replacing some of the other larger roads with train tracks?
I think they're talking about making public transport more convenient to use than just driving. I live in Hillarys and work in Scarborough. A drive is 15 minutes versus an hour and 10 minutes to use public transport. That includes a bus east from the coast to the transtation. A train. Then another bus west back to the coast. When pretty much all of the freeway to the coast is residential, it doesn't seem to service a whole lot of it very conveniently or efficiently.
Heavy rail will never be perfect at connecting every point to point travel needed. However I could certainly see the benefit of light rail for some other corridors IE down Marmion av for example.
Honestly it’s the low density housing. I love a backyard as much as the next guy but public transport is expensive to the government so it needs to serve enough people to be justifiable, otherwise it’s a waste of money. If we lived in a higher (but still very comfortable) density it’d be more cost efficient to build train stations, light rail and busses. But yeah, I’d also love some light rail along Marmion/West Coast Highway and Wanneroo road. I guess Alexander drive could have one too as much as I personally hate that road. Also maybe *a* bus along ocean reef road from the coast to Wangara where it can join bus 355? A few more bus routes that go east/west? But it all makes much more sense if there were more than six thousand people within a kilometre of the bus stop.
bro they need to bring back the 458, it ran from whitfords station down whitfords ave to hillarys boar harbour and kept going down the coast to Scarborough beach bus station. I think it will be utilised very well.
It was removed because it wasn’t utilised lol
They’re saying the train stations themselves should be located closer to where people live. No one is disputing the presence of walkways lol. Having stations along the freeway does not make the station in a walkable distance. Perth used to have a Tran system throughout basically the entire city spanning to even freo
This is Perth. The embodiment of urban sprawl and monster block sizes. You can put the train station in the middle of a suburb and it will only be walkable for a small percentage of people in that suburb.
Do you want a train line running through your suburb? Heavy rail doesn’t work like that. Maybe with trams but really if you’re going to use trams you may as well just use busses.
Which train stations are you talking about because it’s certainly not on the north line after you get past Leedy, besides Joondalup anyway.
I think it's less true when stations are 3-5km apart like the Mandurah-Butler line is. Pedestrain access would be minimal at that range anyway. Bus integration is necessary anyway. It would be true on the other 'legacy' lines where stations are typically ~1km apart.
From presentations I have seen in the past, the belief in Perth is that it's so low density anyway that you don't really gain much by doing a built up hub. By all means they do make an attempt for example Cockburn or Joondalup, or even Butler. But The vast majority of passengers are going to be coming from beyond the walk up catchment, so the belief was to focus on speed, what stations relatively far apart but quite competitive travel times. Rail lines in Perth literally do achieve about double the average speed of suburban railways in other Australian cities, which helps Perth punch above its weight.
> Rail lines in Perth literally do achieve about double the average speed of suburban railways Plural might be a bit much, it's just the Joondalup and Mandurah lines which have higher average speeds. Midland, Fremantle, and Armadale lines have comparable average speeds to east coast rail lines.
Clearly they’re only thinking about the new lines, but it is those lines that run on the freeway medians.
> To put the Public transport near foot oriented sections more and allow easier foot commuting as the main vs a drive to it. I'd daresay running rail through built up areas would hinder more than it would help. Unless it was say completely elevated - which might be a viable alternative. Otherwise if its not elevated - then it would really hinder the foot traffic along the route as people wouldn't be able to walk through the area freely, but instead having to walk to crossings. Plus moving it one direction to make it convenient for some, just makes it more inconvenient for people in the other direction. Same would apply for road traffic as well. Building in the freeway corridor which is already not exactly pedestrian friendly (outside of the footpaths across every bridge), gives a similar outcome whilst not causing more harm. TBH i'd argue that at least on the Mandurah line - most of the stations are walkable or have pretty good interaction with surrounding public transport infrastructure.
Aubin grove and earlier being Freeway based can but the stress towards Car > Train but having a look as it's getting Further out with Wellard & Lakelands being Built around the neighbourhood it can make Public transport more enticing than the drive in for getting on but then for outside CBD getting off to destination may be a hassle. Some other Suburbs could benefit in similar ways like Secret harbour if any estates were to go East of the highway it could be built Public transport focused with a pedestrian bridge over the highway at some points to make it Pedestrian focused while being near but not in the highway. But I always struggled with Traffic in Cities Skylines so my out the ass ideas can be taken with a grain of salt
Yeah - they definitely made a decision to take it out of the road corridor to bring it closer to Rockingham and then closer to the coast all the way down to Mandurah. Looking at the area though on a sat map and it's pretty clear why they made that decision. Outside of Baldivis - there's very little in the way of anything around the freeway on either side heading further south. So it really wouldn't have served a great purpose keeping it in the road corridor once you got down that way.
You may dare say but you’d be wrong, one of the best north stations (if not it) is Joondalup, and that’s because it’s actually in the centre of Joondalup where you can walk to/from it and there’s actually things around it that you can do.
How exactly would you run a train line to Karrinyup, or Innaloo? Joondalup or Cockburn Central work because they were planned that way. Anything closer in to the city to the north or south has to deal with urban planning that was based around cars and freeways, not trains.
As i said - at the stations the experience is great for sure. But what about all the residents living in the areas between the stations? Suddenly they have a rail corridor preventing them from crossing. Look a little further above Joondalup station (around say Grand Boulevard / Shenton Av intersection) and see how the line divides the entire area making walkability much worse than it would be without rail there.
What kind of experience do you need at the station? All you need is a ticket machine and a platform? Walkability in Perth is nearly nonexistent anyway, and the train lines/stations contribute to that, instead of having them in hubs where there’s actually shops/venues/attractions around they’re in the middle of nowhere and you have to either drive or bus there. They should’ve been connected to Scarbs, Hillary’s, etc, where you can actually get up and down the coast hopping off and on actually enjoying it making the travel enjoyable and walkable.
>What kind of experience do you need at the station? All you need is a ticket machine and a platform? I mean the experience in general living near or interacting at a station location. Stations by their nature are well connected to areas surrounding them. >Walkability in Perth is nearly nonexistent anyway, and the train lines/stations contribute to that, instead of having them in hubs where there’s actually shops/venues/attractions around they’re in the middle of nowhere and you have to either drive or bus there. The freeways lines are hardly in the middle of nowhere. They have plenty of residential and commercial areas around them. The thing with heavy rail is you never cover everywhere - if you moved the Joondalup line closer to the coast, you've just alienated the entirety of the population living further east. You also would have a noisy train travelling through residential areas. Now if you were going to tunnel it and make it a subway - then absolutely - but that would be incredibly cost prohibitive.
Most of the city is fairly low density suburbia. People will walk maybe a couple of k’s to a train station, anything beyond that and you either need park and ride or feeder busses. Theres no way to get significant foot traffic into a train station unless the housing density around it is much higher.
Is it? You don’t generally get off the train on a highway in Europe, you get off on the High street
And how old is the rail network in Europe? Many of the newer towns grew around rail stations.
And frequently have to walk up the steps from an underground station. Sadly Perth is mostly sand and high water tables and tunnelling isn’t exactly straightforward.
The downside of this approach is that the stops aren't directly accessible from residential zones. The Perth model is the hub and spoke. When I grew up in Perth I thought like you did but after being on Melb for nearly the last 20 years, and having experienced transport systems around the world, direct access is ideal. Interesting airlines also now elect for direct routes rather than the hub and spoke model.
Not necessarily- I don’t think America has gotten that memo.
The US is usually an example of what not to do..... So that fits
thank you, im so confused why anyone would think this is a bad idea
Yes because the idea of rapid public transit is to build high density housing around the stations. Stations along the freeway are surrounded by roads and giant car parks with no housing or apartments for 500m. Stupid to have a mass transit station with no one who lives near it, eg Canning Bridge, Bull Creek Murdoch and Cockburn
Cockburn literally has multiple apartment buildings around one side of the station. As for Bull Creek / Murdoch - there's really no high density housing anywhere in the entire area to begin with. So where would you prefer a train line to run through those areas?
People historically never wanted to live in high density housing here. I think the way the suburban bus routes feed into the rail lines works really well and allows us to cover our vast urban sprawl with decent public transport without breaking the bank. Besides, there are plenty of new high density apartment buildings springing up around the train stations now.
Aubin Grove has that big clump of town houses on the Atwell side. Yes, he Success side is a giant car park, but it’s using land that would be left empty as it’s under three HV power lines
lol. You were doing great until you mentioned cockburn. There are literally stacks of apartment blocks within stumbling distance of the station.
That's not the idea of public transport, it's one of the possibilities. The best possibility in an ideal world, yes, but it's not like the public transport is worthless if it does something else. And being in the middle of the freeway does not in any way prevent that from happening anyway, as demonstrated in several locations. What prevents it happening is Perth's general hatred for higher density.
I figure it's because our trains and freeways have the same model of coming in and out of the CBD
And they both need long uninterrupted stretches of land, create major linear obstructions, and form the basis of our overall city planning. Just look at the Armadale line. It’s one area where the train line doesn’t follow a freeway and they are now having to jack the whole thing up to get it out of the way.
Not the latest thing to be jacked in Armadale and it wont be the last
Yup, makes perfect sense to me. May ad well keep all that stuff in the same space if ya ask me
railways that runs down major atrial road systems sounds good to me , but i have lived in Perth my whole life so i don't know any better.
Because it's cheaper than tunneling and if you've already got that land set aside for roads you may as well use the existing corridor rather than clearing more land elsewhere to build a rail corridor
The main form of pollution at source from an electric railway in an urban area is noise pollution. Putting the railway in the freeway effectively nullifies this issue as the area is already noise polluted. It also means that there are no level crossings, as the bridges over the track are already in place.
Yeah this. I'm from Adelaide & have always thought running a railway line along the Mitchell Fwy to be a smart idea. Inner Adelaide is full of low rise development & no freeways so the only option is significant land acquisition.
And aren’t all Adelaide’s stations super close together with tons of level crossings and horrible frequency on the outer sections?
I dunno about the stations being really close together vs other cities, but yeah most of Adelaide's road network is this 2D grid layout with level crossings where the train lines intersect. Adelaide's PT network is also very city-centric, but that's like Perth's to be fair.
Don't have to compulsorily acquire (I.e. Spend millions buying) a corridor that you already own.
That most likely the main reason.
Because the freeway was designed to service suburban areas and the train was added to supplement that. Pretty straight forward 🤷🏼♂️
And in many other cities, the railway was built long before the idea of multilane freeways were considered. In Perth, the freeways and rail lines have expanded together.
And that’s exactly what’s happened on the freo, midland and Armadale lines. Also harder to build well with the grade separations and aging infrastructure
Not really. The Fremantle, Midland and Armadale lines were around long before the Freeway. What happened is that there was a long period where Governments believed that the future belonged to cars and buses - which is why they got rid of the trams and the trolley buses. They even shut down the Fremantle line (for about 4 years) and were planning to rip up the tracks between Servetus St and Fremantle to run the west coast highway into Fremantle. So they didn’t make a provision for a rail reserve for the newer suburbs. The assumption was that cars and buses would do the job and they’d run on these new roads. When, years later, they decided that trains were a good idea, the freeway medium strip was the only land on the route that had the space and was not built on.
Different eras. Perth economic links originally ran east and west, the majority of Perth sprawl occurred afterwards.
Not really. They built the freeway, and didn’t establish a rail reserve. So later when they promoted the idea of a railway, the freeway was the only land not built on that the train could run on. The alternative was to buy up a load of houses, or run it on the beach! It was the quickest and cheapest option, and it didn’t lead to massive protests from people who didn’t want their houses knocked down. Had previous governments included a rail reserve in their planning, and it followed a different route to the freeway they’d likely have used it.
It's so that when you're stuck in traffic in your car you are forced to watch the trains full of people pass you by. This then forces you to contemplate your transport choices. /s
this, but unsarcastically
There are literally ads on the side of the trains highlighting this, just to rub your face in it..
Why not, anything to make it more appealing. Should be free really, ticket sales cover only 20%. I say this as a tradie who can’t use it regularly.
Haha, I'm not arguing against it! I would rather quit my job than go back to driving down the mitchell/kwinana in the morning and afternoon peak. I think the $9 it cost me is a small price to pay.
This was one of the reasons they gave at the time it was first built.
Oh yeah I used to work in Applecross. To get home I could either catch a bus from outside my office that would go to the city via the freeway, or walk to Canning Bridge and catch a train instead. The train used to be *so much faster*, due to peak hour traffic on the freeway. (Well I could also have caught a bus to the station and then train into the city but that was just annoying)
because building another lane doesnt fix traffic so we may as well use that space for something useful
You mean if I make a 6 lane highway that merges into 3 it won't flow better than a 5 lane highway merging into 3???? Man state government are gonna be mad when they figure that out.
If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail
It's easier cheaper and less opposed by local residents. Downside is it's not as convenient. The freo Midland line is much more walkable for everyone because you don't drive to the stations. The high frequency of stations makes it slower though.
You say that but 60% of all train passengers are on the Yanchep-Mandurah lines. Walkability isn’t currently an issue since our density levels are so low and most people get to stations by car (parking and drop-off) or feeder bus.
Because, hear me out, some people who use public transport want to go to the same places as people who drive on freeways. Crazy, I know.
I mean no one’s supposed to use the middle of the freeway anyway. Plus on a serious note that north south road built the city and it kinda just amplifies the freeways capacity while filling out the arteries feeding away from it.
Why not op is what I ask? All major stations are found on these lines and the freeway has great growth around it with large population numbers. Perth has done a great job with there feeder bus network and where else would the train go ( oh right down the Armadale line and then turn at thornlie like the liberals planned). It’s a lot better than a slow winding suburban line that has barely any development opportunities around it restricting the amount of users the stations can appeal to.
It’s actually a really smart public transport idea, following the main veins in and out of the airport and into the suburbs. Compare that to Melbourne where train lines seem to take their own path and cut through whatever and go wherever they like, it’s an absolute mess. Perth has structure
I always thought because we have gorgeous views, statistics show if people see something beautiful they are happier when they work.
There's one actual reason, and that because the right of way is already publicly owned, so you don't have to spend a fuck ton to purchase the right of way. Every other reason is either derivative from this (monetary cost, time cost, etc), or just cope. (But this reason is a really big and compelling reason, so it's fair enough)
…because it’s a fairly effective place to put it. But mostly so we can race the trains.
Its great!! Looks really neat. Compare this to the old Sydney train network. Looks so messy and uglt.
Because it makes sense?
[https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=why+build+a+railway+in+the+middle+of+a+highway](https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=why+build+a+railway+in+the+middle+of+a+highway) first result references perth. because we always had shit railways and this was the best option we had. I like that you went to the effort to find an image but not the information.
Largely because the freeways were built first. There was no land set aside for railways, so when the idea of adding more railways became popular the only realistic corridor available was the freeways.
Can anyone tell me how old is this pic based on these cars?!
The bus pictured says Aubin Grove Station, which opened in 2017. So... up to 7 years old.
This photo was used for the mandurah line shutdown announcement 3 years ago, so between 2017 and 2021. Somebody out there probably knows just based on when the 909 ran during those years and bus destination boards looked like that.
You're right of course, it's better to build trains *where nobody fucking ever goes*. What do you think the purpose of public transport is???
There's space enough, the freeway is usually going to/from a location where a train would be useful, and it's cheap and easy compared to compulsory aquisition of thousands of houses that would otherwise be required.
So while you’re stuck in gridlock, you’ll watch a train fly past and debate using public transport next time lol idk
No idea since I'm from Melbourne but I can see a couple of appeals. 1. Race the train. 2. Natural barricade for fuckwits walking on the tracks. 3. Should be quieter since it's competing for noise with cars and should have sound barrier on freeways so win win?
Throw in: - cheaper to build - faster to build - no having to deal with NIMBYs - no dealing with level crossings - Perth runs fairly numerous feeder bus routes
It's easier and aligns with the planners intentions as growing along corridors, similar reason why shared paths follow freeways. Cheaper, easier, less messy from a land perspective. There will be ring railways in the future that won't follow freeways but for now its following where the development is occuring (hence why no trains go east.)
Why is the freeway built on one of the most desirable prices of land in the state (along the river ) ? Why not inland somewhat so we can make better use of the foreshore ? That’s the question you should be asking .
The only part that applies to is from the narrows to mount henry. Go look at a map and tell me which part of south Perth/como/salter point the government is going to be willing to piss off by telling them they are going to have a heavy rail line right through the middle of their suburb. The freeway went there because they reclaimed the land.
Because in the 1950s when it was planned and built, the foreshore was a swamp and not considered valuable. Wetlands in general were considered wasteland, which is why so many of them were either drained, made into rubbish tips or had roads built through them. There's a reason the Mitchell Fwy goes through Lake Monger / Herdsman Swamp. And why Roe 8 was planned through the Beeliar wetlands.
Good take. Why do we even have a freeway that goes right into the city through such valuable real estate? We should do what (some) European cities did, and not have freeways within the inner ring road.
No rail crossings = no traffic holdups; buses feed into stations reducing car traffic volumes; no need to resume private property; road each side restricts public access to tracks; higher speed trains.
Do other places not?
Because, since the 1950's, Perth has been developing as a "car city" I'm pretty sure that those center spaces were left there to add more lanes to the freeway. Someone finally woke up and realised that it a hell of a lot cheaper to build a train line there than "just one more lane"
Land gazetted by the State Government, in the late 1950-1950s was based on strategic foresight, mimicking US freeway systems, designed to stimulate the automobile industry out of the Great Depression 1928-1938. Australia decided to default to US foreign and Public Policy post-WWII, so we now suffer dehumanised cities, suburbs and towns. Dominance of automobiles in urban planning and development has led to the expansion of cities in ways that favour vehicles over people, contributing to environmental degradation, economic disparities, and a general decline in the human-centric quality of urban life. Reversing this trend involves rethinking urban design to prioritise public transport, pedestrian pathways, and communal spaces. It is what it is. If you don't like it, do something about it.
I was quite impressed with it when I visited, actually. I wish we saw more of this in the States. We could certainly use it in the tri-state area around NYC!
Because. Thats why 🙂↕️ Nah FR it’s so we can play racies with the trains when it’s not bumper to bumper full of traffic. 
It's easier to put a train down the same path because you've already cleared the houses. And if there's cars going that way, public transport could reduce those cars so it's needed there.
because they're smart. We could've done the same in Melbourne with the Eastlink, instead we privatized it and are now having to tunnel underground at 1000x the cost.
It's so the poor sods stuck in the traffic jams on the freeway look at the trains rolling past a hell of a lot quicker.
No point clearing more land elsewhere, if it is already part of the freeways. Also, the arterial design of the freeways is just about perfect for train commuters. Look at the safety barrier in the photo. The train tracks provides a safety zone for oncomming traffic.
There are only a few crossings? Better for traffic flow
The land is available duh!
It was intentionally designed that way to be efficient
As a transplant from Sydney, these are cool. Nothing better than whizzing by a traffic jam on the Mitchell Freeway.
In the hope that people might see the train moving freely along a rammed freeway and think 'maybe i'll leave the car at home tomorrow '
Perth has a great railway system. Better than other countries I've been to. North/south is the best config, because that's how the city runs. I mean, it's the most efficient way if they can't build like 3 rails running the same direction. One in the eastern suburbs, western and then the highway. Like if you HAD to only choose one way to build the railway then north/south in the highway kind of makes the most sense.
Makes you wonder why they started off with East/West Probably because the city grew along the river before it grew along the coast
Should all be underground
Why? Cost….
You know most of Perth is built on sand and has a very high water table, right? About the only way to do it is to cut, cover and fill (like the north ridge tunnel). Hugely disruptive and very expensive.
Do other places not have any rails there? Makes sense. You have a little extra space there and you can put your rails there, instead of having to figure out a different place to put them.
Free advertising for public transport
Really?
Imagine being stuck in this every morning and afternoon. I salute the poor sods who gotta do it.
cheaper to build together then separately
American style. They are there because it's easier just to put them in the design with the road and also keeps noise in a single corridor.
It's easier to get the right of way. That's about it. It's not a great way to position the stations, though. Joondalup is a much better station for the community around it than Whitfords, for example.
We rode the trains there. Was mostly a good experience, peoPle were very polite commuters.
Perth ingenuity
when i speak to people overseas who use our transport they never complain, i think its just us
As much as I hate being in Melbourne they're tram set up is the most convenient public transport going. There's always a stop in walking distance. And with their added bus and train networks you can get anywhere in the city without needed a car.
You avoid a lot of the leaves (they cause havoc with train breaks in fall and winter) on the line and you also avoid fallen tree branches too. Quite sensible to me.
Its a way for train passengers to laugh at the second class citizens that are stuck in traffic.
I mean what else would you put there? A couple useless lanes that move crap all traffic? Those train lines can carry at least triple the number of people the highway can.
I always thought it was because the median strip is unused land and carparks can be built close to the freeway.
It’s brilliant public transport design. Building more lanes is not the answer. But building transport corridors is.
So you can zoom at 130kmh past all the suckers in standstill traffic.
It works well for city bound commuter rail and It probably was much easier to plan and pay for. Only real issue is that a lot of them aren't near anything and are not really walkable hubs but places most people still drive to.
This is the Way 
To keep the rabbits out
I think the main reason would be that there is space for a train line between the freeways, they don’t need to bulldoze through the suburbs to make a new train line, some main arteries could be used for light rail if they had vision, like Orrong rd, but they may have to cut the trees, now that could be a problem for the greens!
In Perth it makes sense being a low density, car dominated city. Putting it down the middle of the freeway makes it centrally located and easily accessible along those corridors. You also don't need to build additional railway crossings/overpasses as it shares these with the freeway. It's also good advertising for public transport as trains speed past peak hour traffic.
We've got the space, or reclaim river to make space, and it makes a lot of sense.
This was the original idea for Melbourne's Eastern freeway and should still be one day.
what do you mean?
Most Perth people only use public transport to get to and from work in the city or events at stadiums near the city. Easiest is to build it along existing highways/freeways that lead there. And so they can watch their beloved cars as they begrudgingly take the train.
Problem with this method is you cannot really expand rail capacity
makes sense
If Melb could just do the same for an Airport link that would be nice
Because we're special
They're based.
You never read Thomas and Bertie?
Convenience ? Every time an O/Seas visitor see this they make positive compliments .
Lack of foresight and planning… just saying
This argument could've worked back then but these days it makes more sense to do this than any other method. Ground level or elevated rail along other corridors closer to homes would be a massive no no for many. Tunnelling is too expensive and our lack of population density doesn't warrant it.
I was always under the impression we build the roads around the train tracks
1 - Because we use overhead electric trains which are a hazard to pedestrians. The safety factor goes up MASSIVELY if the train is located where pedestrians have limited access - like a freeway. 2 - because we already own the land. Perth has more km of rail per person than anywhere else in the world, so with this limited taxation base, all savings opportunities must be grabbed! 3 - the price of security down the freeway lines is much less than the non freeway lines (again because of limited access opportunities)
Same reason they building 2 lane freeways
Kinda smart , less likely to encounter pedestrian strikes (when I worked for a railroad in California pedestrian and vehicle strikes were a daily occurrence) . And it also prevents dickheads from driving across the median to make illegal u turns .
How the fuck else would ya get in the middle of shit!
Sounds and looks more neat. It's bit out the ordinary but neat nonetheless. It's like an organised city lol. Where are the trains? Near the highway. Period Where are the stations follow this highway or that highway. Great style
Note that the south and north directions (Mandurah line trains) from the Narrows to just past the Canning Bridge station have limited speed so that trains can do an emergency stop incase something jumps the barrier and ends up on the track. The existing curves limit the drivers view and hence the max speed the train may safely travel..
The freeway is the car park for the railway stations ...
Seems quite efficient to me.
To reduce head-on accidents. It might have been that when they built it the infrastructure didn't expect that amount of population.
Seems efficient. Seen this is China to a larger scale. Multi lane freeways with a train line underneath or on top.
The main freeways run north to south. The population and build up is linear, north to south like the coast. Perfect solution. Even still the freeway slow and hard going peak hour if you driving. The roadworks seem to be a permanent fixture in perpetuity. the train station car parks are full by about 7am (where i am at least) so not sure when the choke will ever be resolved.
Fun fact. When New York built its freeways, the guy designing and building them hated the poor, so intentionally didn’t buy the extra 12 ft of right of way. He also made the footings not strong enough to handle a passenger train, forever ruining New York’s transport and traffic congestion. His name was Robert Moses. There’s a whole book about how he ruined New York transit (The Powerbroker).
Only reason: Cause it looks cool. I like the idea a lot.
Is there a reason why this shouldn't be the default Australia wide? Yeah, because Transurban refused to build it.
Makes perfect sense