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Melbourne Publiic Transport Infrastructure
- Thread starter Ian4
- Start date
Liverpool said:
Soft option Livers. The Government needs to prove they are committed to the work by actually starting it, then I'll consider the around the fringes stuff. But until works actually begin there is no reason to believe that they have any intention to upgrade the rail network. The roads experiments in Melbourne have continually failed. Rail is the way to move large populations safely and quickly and efficiently in a large modern city. It is a no-brainer. Where are they getting the money for the new tunnel? Why is it more important to clear a bottle neck of polluting single person transporting cars at Hoddle Street than to build mass transport infrastructure that is cleaner and moves many more people more safely and with less pollution? The road link will improve access to the airport. You know what else would do that? And actually "reduce" traffic rather than encouraging it? Trains.
evo said:
but it causes gridlock in the train system. the tunnel will ease congestion between north melbourne and richmond. once finished, the sunbury line will run all the way to the dandenong corridor via the metro rail tunnel. this will free up tracks to allow other lines to run more services. eventually other lines will run cross-town as well. the plan is to run a werribee to sandringham line and i believe upfield to frankston. pretty sure the plan is also to link up one of the northern suburbs lines with the glen waverley line as well.
evo said:
No argument here evo. Any real works would be welcome. Governments and road obsessives point to Electrification and extension both of which worsen the problem.
evo said:
i guess everyone has their own view, but i would have thought fixing the existing problems should come before any new lines are built... as i said, the metro rail tunnel should solve the current bottlenecks. i can't see the doncaster line being built anytime soon now that the state govt has prioritised the road link first (still staggered by this decision).
Ian4 said:
Either way, people still have to travel through the loop to get from one suburban region to another (e.g. from Preston to Burwood without travelling south to the City and out east again). It would've been much easier if our rail lines (all or most) connected together.
TigerForce said:
yes you have to travel through the city, but not necessarily via the loop. once the metro tunnel is finished, the idea is that only 4 of the lines will run through the loop, one line will run through the new tunnel and the rest will run cross-town via flinders and spencer st.
KnightersRevenge said:
Interesting reading the last couple of pages. I agree partly with both yourself and Livers. I agree absolutely that public transport need to be a priority. I don't agree with this part above though.
The population needs to be diverted to regional areas. Regional towns need to be made more attractive. We need a high speed train to Sydney with a few stops along the way. More philosophically, if we are going to be able to accept the high levels of immigration we currently accept (as a percentage of our existing population), we need to change our culture and remove the stigma associated with not living in a major city. This is one thing that seems to be uniquely Australian.
The alternative is for Melbourne to grow to 6 million, 7 million and beyond. As some have suggested, for cities to function with this many people, they need a comprehensive PT network like London. While I agree with this, Melbourne can never have that sort of public transport system. Everything is just too spread out and it could never be that efficient. Our roads, parks, nature strips, office foyers, kitchens, driveways, etc etc, are much bigger/more common than in most major cities around the world. It is apples and oranges.
This isn't to say we shouldn't try to fix up our PT system as a priority, but I think Melbourne can't sustain this kind of population growth forever, unless virtually all new residential building is within walking distance of the CBD.
martyshire said:
I wouldn't say I disagree with this philosophically. But the refusal to keep up with the necessary work to keep the system ahead of population has been a massive oversight and works need to be fast-tracked now to begin the long slow task of bringing our rail network into the 21st century. Sure there are other ideas in terms of converting our city/state into a more amorphous less city-centric society but as you say this is philosophical territory and hard for a state government to shift the societal philosophy quickly . They can start to fix the trains now though.
As I asked Livers....how do you achieve these changes? What makes people want to move away from the city? I imagine what you are talking about takes decades even centuries. I don't think there is evidence that modern state governments think on these timescales.
evo said:
Yes but through a common section of the system which now forms a bottleneck, every single train must pass through City Loop. If the outer suburbs connected independantly of the city and were duplicated enough to allow more express services you could run an order of magnitude more trains. As I have said before rail has a life span measured in centuries why must the costs be considered in parliamentary terms?
martyshire said:
probably one for the overpopulation thread, but i agree that it would be better to expand the major regional areas in victoria instead of expanding melbourne. if you get the infrastructure right, why can't geelong, ballarat, bendigo, la trobe valley, goulburn valley, etc, grow to $1 million?
KnightersRevenge said:
yep. sydney have cross-suburban train lines that don't run direct to the city. of course i agree with the idea... but as i keep saying, we need to fix the current train lines first before we consider other options
Personally I think the fast train is the key and the rest of the infrastructure would follow. If you could get a train from Albury to Melbourne in an hour and Albury to Sydney in 3 hours, I'm sure a lot of people would prefer to live in Albury than the outer suburbs of Melbourne.Ian4 said:
Ian4 said:
Yeah, some other bozo came up with that idea:
Liverpool said:
....but was shot down by others who want the sitting Government to send the state into financial disarray by spending money we haven't got
You lot make me laugh :cutelaugh
Tommo37 said:There were 2 terrible performances last night,
1. The RFC for that rubbish on the field.
2. Metro for not having any trains at Richmond station after the game and waiting 20 minutes for the first train to arrive and then not being able to get on that due to the platforms being packed solid and having to wait even longer for the next train and struggling to get on that.
Still too sore to talk about the first one.
The second is a recurring peeve of mine. Metro boast of putting on extra trains for the footy, but when you drill down, it's about 20 trains over 6-7 lines, most of which are before a match. People ARRIVE at different times, so you don't many need extra trains: people will self-regulate. But they LEAVE at the SAME time - why is that impossible to grasp? There should be one train after another, arriving at 5 min intervals, filling up then leaving, then the next arriving shortly. Instead, we get one train (maybe two), filling up then sitting there, overfilling and still sitting, then a 20 min wait for the next. It's the weekend, not peak hour on a weekday - there are spare trains and drivers available.
I've been told by Metro that they cannot put on more trains after a match because they only plan 4 weeks ahead. That makes no sense: the footy fixture is set in advance, and everyone knows which will be the blockbuster matches. They can also forecast which lines to target from the fixture (a Geelong match will require a lot of trains into the city to change for Geelong trains; WB matches will need more on the western lines; Hawthorn on the south-eastern lines, etc). You see old people, toddlers, the disabled all crushed up together on platforms, being stampeded in the rush to get on to the train (because who knows when the next will come), then a crush all the way home.
Wish the AFL would target this....
KnightersRevenge said:
Exactly right KR. The other mode of PT that should be re-adjusted are the buses. Instead of just having buses travel around limited suburban regions, why not cross-paths also by making them travel further around Greater Melbourne?
Just like my previous example: a person could just catch the 1 bus to get from Preston to Sandringham. Buses in Sydney travel much longer distances.
martyshire said:
if that happens in the next 20 years, i can see myself living in albury. it's my favourite rural city and i intend of doing a tree change when i get close to retirement.
HeadandShin said:
it's the metro PR machine dude. do you notice when they add new services they always say something along the lines of 'the new timetable includes 200 new services.' but when you read the fine print, it's actually 200 new services per week... which equates to 28 extra services per day on average. and if you divide it by the number of lines in the system, it actually equates to around 2 new services per line per day on average, which is really not much.
TigerForce said:
actually the smart bus system has been in operation for many years now and they do run across town and most of them bypass the city
