If being designed for two tracks is the brief, then underground wouldn’t be any different. Indeed just more expensive to add in the others later compared to above ground.
Looks like SkyBus is picking the “ideal” time to jack up their fares…
Yes I saw the report last night and was not happy about it. Why do the price rise now instead of February or early March when less people were travelling?
Also, the Victorian Government has forked out $10 million to keep The Overland train service running until the end of 2018, but the Federal Government will stop its subsidy for concession card holders on June 30.
We really need an airport rail link in Melbourne.
It’s getting beyond a joke now, relying on a bus service which now has to drive through heavy roadworks along the Tullamarine Freeway / Western Link, scheduled for more than a year long. If only there was a line they could use.
Good news: Victorian public transport information is finally available on Google Maps. Better late than never.
Skybus announced yesterday it would start a new service between Melbourne Airport and St Kilda from this winter, with buses running every 30 minutes from 6.30am to 7.30pm every day. A one-way ticket will cost $19. It will be interesting to find out how Skybus will operate in St Kilda, given the route’s former operator Frankston and Peninsula Airport Shuttle has 12 pick up/drop off points in the area.
The controversial $1.6 billion “sky rail” project to remove nine level crossings on the Pakenham/Cranbourne lines in Melbourne’s south-east will start in a few weeks, after the Victorian Government signed the construction contract with a consortium led by Lend Lease and Metro Trains.
Thought I’d leave this here. Its a map of the ‘fantasy’ Metro network that I found a while ago.
What do you all think?
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It looks pretty good. The most obvious error is in the west, where Tarneit and Wyndham Vale are now served by V/Line trains on the Geelong line, branching from Deer Park.
The Victorian Government handed down its 2016/2017 budget today and had decided to build the Melbourne Metro rail project without federal funding. It has also committed $1.3 billion for public transport projects in Melbourne’s north east and west, including the Mernda Rail Project (extending the South Morang line northward to Mernda), duplication of the notorious single track bottle neck on the Hurstbridge line between Heidelberg and Rosanna, duplication of the Ballarat line between Deer Park and Melton, and procuring 28 extra High Capacity Metro Trains.
UPDATE 19/5: the Government announced the Mernda line extension will be a combination of below ground and elevated tracks. Five new bridges will be built between Plenty Road and Mernda town centre. I think it is the right design, the railway being so close to Plenty River ruling a below ground construction.
The Victorian Government will set up a new central transport agency called Transport for Victoria (TFV), following the models of Transport for London (TfL) and Transport for NSW. TFV will bring together the planning, coordination and operation of
Victoria’s transport system and its agencies, including VicRoads and Public Transport Victoria (PTV). The government plans to have the new agency running by the end of this year.
It seems every decade or so since the 1980s there is a change of public transport management in the state, from The Met in 1980s, to Public Transport Corporation in 1990s, Metlink in 2000s and PTV in 2010s.
I’m confused - is this a merger or just a restructure of both VicRoads and PTV’s current responsibilities?
(Edit: found my answer
https://twitter.com/danielbowen/status/747253279680143360
My initial confusion is from the term “merger” being thrown around in the early wire reports)
Apropos of nothing, can anybody think of a reason why Melbourne does not number its train lines? Referring to trains solely by their ultimate destination strikes me as being not very user-friendly, especially for visitors and especially given that trains often terminate before the end of the line.
I know Stockholm does but i don’t know anywhere else that does?
It is certainly standard in major cities in German-speaking countries: off the top of my head, Frankfurt, Cologne, Berlin, Munich, Hamburg, Vienna …
And I know little about other Australian cities’ public transport systems, but Sydney has numbered lines too, doesn’t it?
I don’t think so.
Overseas, and London certainly doesn’t. Neither does Vienna from what I can remember from being there last year? (Ok, now I’m not so sure… and too sleepy to google!)
Rome i think only does for its underground metro, or theirs might be alphabetical, i can’t recall for sure there either. Bloody memory!
Sydney does have numbered lines from T1 to T7.
There you go. Obviously it’s a long time since I’ve been to Sydney
Only recently introduced and pretty much useless. T1 is like a combination of 4 different train lines.
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Agreed. T1 is made up of two different lines. A case of change for the sake of it.