I was thinking Barcelona as a similarish size city with an extensive underground network. Obviously some of the use case in Melbourne us taken by (slow) trams.
Regarding transport scaling. You’d think wouldn’t you, yet the media whinging, and years of no investment make me question it. If it did then there would have been investment in transport in the growth corridors, instead of massive traffic jams at the one freeway entrance and no meaningful PT links.
It needs constant planning and building, it doesn’t just happen.
Barcelona is a good example. I was surprised that their population closely matches what Greater Melbourne is.
The planning definitely happens.
But the argument easily gets sidetracked to too much ‘government spending’.
It’s going to be a real tough nut to crack because the perceived ‘government spending’ is a good chance to lose a politician an election. Especially on something that takes years for it to actually build let alone another decade for it to pay off. And unfortunately, the people arguing against the spending are usually the ones who don’t use it at all. People don’t realise that roads and train networks work hand in hand, not against each other.
We’ve experienced both political sides using ‘government spending’ for their own needs or political gain.
We’ve had to pay $1mil (maybe it was more) to a construction company not to build a free way extension that was probably needed but wasn’t essential at the time. We even had the ‘Footscray Hospital’ is a waste of money talking points leading up to the last election. That still has a few months of scrutiny leading up to the official opening next year.
Unfortunately, political discussion points on public infrastructure shouldn’t be so heavily tied to governments. It would be great to take it out of their hands, but unfortunately, even if it did, the funding still comes from them anyway so it’ll still be debated.
Governments exist to provide public infrastructure, not sure why you think anyone else could provide it. Do you feel the same about Police and Hospitals ?
I said they still would need to provide the funding.
There is no answer to the issue. What we have is about the best we can ask for.
We just need better governments that are strong enough to ignore general public pressure, build infrastructure that will inevitably blow the budget, take longer to build than their actual term and will continually be considered a waste of spending until it’s opened, functional and forgotten about.
I just wish the discussion around public infrastructure went past the ‘cost’ of it or the ‘I don’t use it, so it’s not needed’.
I would also love both political parties getting together and agreeing on a longer term plan of public infrastructure. But I doubt that’ll work. It’ll probably fuel another bullshit political debate though.
Anyway…
I’ll let this discussion get back to the original intent, which was trains and not make it political.
And yes, I’d love for a Beijing style rail network. Even a Tokyo like above ground network would be great. I don’t see it happening that quickly. Certainly not in 5 years time.
The dreaded Red Rattlers were divided into 3 compartments, 2 for smoking, and in between was the non smoking, packed with mums and kids, getting the last off peak train, before 4.30. The Harris trains looked modern and had a cool livery.
Not starting a political debate, but our system of Government prevents bipartisanship or at least makes it difficult. As long as you have an opposition, it is their job to oppose. Systems sucks !
Mrs Fox is a train nut, and makes me travel on trains wherever we go.
Tapping off on trams in Melb just smashed timetables because it was a complete pain on packed trams. They’d have preferred to make you tap off, but it was super awkward, so they took the pragmatic decision to just call every trip a zone 1 and be done with it.
Works way better on Melb trams.
Limits the ability to bill differently for different tram trips if that’s something that you care about.
I haven’t caught one of the new Metro Tunnel services, but I got off at Melbourne Central station and took a look around State Library station. It’s a very impressive piece of infrastructure. The walk between the 2 stations is seamless. Anyone need to go from a City Loop to Metro Tunnel service should not have a problem.
Anyone with experiences of the new timetable, and thoughts on whether their services are improved? Frosty Jr reckons Craigieburn line has -1 extra services per day (weekdays, not overnight) and Upfield 0 extra services per day. So not sure there has been any “taking advantage of the extra capacity in the loop available by taking Sunbury out"
The local Sunbury facebook pages are popping off with comments about how terrible the situation is rn with the new loop. Less services and lower frequency. I presume this is temporary but it seems poorly managed. Seeing an increase in people boarding Vline train to avoid the new loop.
That’s weird. Sunbury services were meant to be the good ones, with trains running every 8-10 minutes all day. Are they turning them around before Sunbury?
Today I’ve used the Metro tunnel for the first time. Overall it’s pretty decent IMO. Seamless integration between State Library and Melbourne Central stations. Unfortunately some moron trespassed the tracks in Footscray so services were late, but that’s no fault of the system itself. But yeah the residual benefits to other lines promised by Labor haven’t materialised.
IIRC there was the potential for select Criagieburn line services to run through the Metro tunnel, but that was reliant on Platform 1 at Essendon being upgraded to a point where it would be useable, but that definitely hasn’t occurred.
Yes, they originally promised extra trains up to Essendon (one of the busiest stations in Melbourne and a tram/bus hub) but I guess they ran out of money.
(And/or they realised that the level crossings at Puckle Street and, to a lesser extent, Park Street would grind to a halt during those peak periods. The decision to do road-under at Buckley Street has made it very difficult to resolve those two remaining level crossings.)
Metro tunnel is good for Pakenham Cranbourne line, heaps of services at peak hours. 3-5 mins between. I like it and have been using it since before Christmas.
I think you don’t really want to run Craigieburn through there anyway. Ideally the Sunbury to E Pakenham is an isolated line, with no need to interact with others (allowing them to stack back to back services without needing to align with services from other lines (the one case with the tunnel lines currently is needing to align with the Traralgon V line, which creates a couple of the bigger gaps between services in the E Pakenham direction.
Ideally, you’d think, the trains on the yellow loop should just be able to run much more often now without any need for Craigieburn to go into the metro tunnel. But the timetable doesn’t seem to have done that (yet? Are they constrained by trains? Drivers? Signalling? Perceived demand?). This is super disappointing for the very busy Craigieburn line. Upfield I wasn’t expecting a significant improvement from the 15 minutes in peak hour service, due to the limitations of the single track to Upfield, but I expected so e improvement, rather than turning a 15 minute service into a 16 minute service, with no real improvements outside peak (20 minutes, to 40 minutes depending on time).