Much has been said and rightly so about the appalling state of Southern Cross Railway Station and the disastrous and poisonous air that envelops the station itself. As recently as earlier this week the Rail Tram and Bus Union of the RTBU have stated the station should be shutdown until a solution is found to the worsening air quality of the station. The situation is by any measure significant, dangerous, a health risk and caused by poor public transport policy and planning.
The Regional Rail Link is not a regional line
There are according to recent articles more than 100 daily rail services between Melbourne and Geelong with all of these using the RRL (Regional Rail Link) which is poorly named as it is not regional it actually connects suburbs of Melbourne not regions another disastrous approach to solving a problem for Geelong.
At the time of its approval and delivery, RRL was one of the largest and most expensive rail projects ever built in Victoria, with an estimated final cost of $3.65 billion.
The RRL was built as a longer way to run trains between Geelong and Melbourne when it should’ve been built to service the largest growing area and suburbs in Australia, it was not. Further, as is outlined in a recent article on Vibewire the RRL had corners cut and scope removed to ensure (there were rumours at the time) those delivering the project would allegedly received their bonuses to reduce costs on the project.
One such scope reduction was the obvious need for a link from Wyndham Vale to Werribee with a new station at West Werribee to serve the burgeoning housing estates around the area. Another was to remove level crossings at Deer Park which remained for years before being removed at a much higher price.
In the 2015/16 State Budget the final cost of the project was given as $3.65 billion, down from the previous estimate of $4.1 billion.
The poor design of the RRL, in the suburbs of Melbourne not the regions, has been to ensure dozens of additional expensive diesel trains have been purchased which now serve our suburbs rather than regional customers. Melbourne could be one of the only major cities where diesel trains service suburbs not clean electric trains, what a shocking outcome for the city, the air and the environment.
Far from the RRL providing a bypass of the suburban network for Geelong line trains, those services have become suburban trains on the Tarneit section of the RRL, being the only ones which can serve those stations. Tarneit station rapidly became the second busiest on the V/Line network after Southern Cross.
Air quality and environmental issues plague the RRL with increasing poor air quality in Southern Cross and reports from the EPA highlight the significant air quality issues in the Footscray area with the number of diesel trains using the tracks through the area. During peak hour times there can be up to 20 trains per hour through the Footscray area.
The affect now of the project, whilst the additional tracks between Southern Cross and Sunshine have been welcomed fir the reasons of adding additional capacity to the rail network, the remainder of the RRL sections are in significant need of redesign and electrification. A negative aspect of the project has been to make Geelong services far more crowded. Greater Geelong is one of the fastest growing cities in Australia and when combined with Great Ballarat the population is similar to Canberra. There have been calls to provide passenger rail services again between Geelong and Ballarat but the government has failed to listen to community and council requests for the services despite the track between the two regional centres being in good condition and stations being available on the route.
The RRL has worsened the chronic overcrowding on peak-hour Geelong trains, as well as slowing of journey times
How to untangle this mess that has developed since the RRL was completed. Public transport planning professionals should have predicted this issue wood occur given the RRL design flaws, they probably chose to ignore them.
What is the solution?
An immediately solution is to commission a project to electrify the RRL network between the city and Werribee west with a connection into Werribee on the line to Melbourne via Newport.
Extend the electrification from both Werribee and Wyndham Vale to Geelong area ensuring the desperately needed decarbonisation of the V/Line network who have no plan to remove diesel trains from suburban and shorter network services.
In fact more are on order when this is the last thing we need in Melbourne.
Can someone who can design networks for customers actually apply for a job at Transport Victoria because nothing works properly under the person who failed once there, is back again and was responsible for the commonwealth games.
Recently I wrote about the shocking and stupid solution for level crossing removals in Melton is actually a step backward for the rail network and is only a benefit to cars not rail passengers.
yes we do need electrification…..
If our decision makers had vision we invest in both long distance IMUs [Inter Urban Multiple Unites] and EMUs for the mid distance routes to enhance our rail system like and overseas country does….
One step further invest in electric locomotives or hybrids like overseas country railways does!
There have been recent reviews internally on the electrification of the RRL considered with the Metro Tunnel works as the government is quick aware of the mayor issues with air quality at SCS and also of the severe overcrowding on the RRL.
There is talk of electrification sooner than later good review of the situation and it is the only way forward.
Be there no doubt electrification is coming to the RRL/Geelong and Ballarat Line, the only reason it was not delivered for the RRL was as mentioned in the article piece project people were paid a bonus to reduce the costs.