RFI's grand Melbourne East-West Rail Plan

The Age has just reported on a Rail Futures Institute proposal to transform rail in Melbourne's west. Dubbed the Melbourne East-West Rail Plan, it would marry the state government's Western Rail Plan with a second Metro tunnel to extend electric rail to the booming outer west, add 12 new stations and speed Geelong trains.  

Spotswood would become a key hub with trains to Werribee/Geelong, Sunshine/Melton, Footscray, Altona/Williamstown, and, most spectacularly of all, under the Yarra to Fishermans Bend, Southern Cross, Fitzroy North and ultimately Wollert in Melbourne's north. 

RFI, made largely of retired rail professionals, wants 'Melbourne East-West Rail' done before the Suburban Rail Loop. They argue that it's more urgent to upgrade rail in the fast-growing west rather than in the more established east. RFI also queries aspects of the SRL's business case and endorses a recent Age editorial calling for a rethink. 

There's background right below but jump ahead if you just want to learn about the East-West Rail. 

Political context

Big infrastructure projects are inextricably bound with politics. Projects needs politicians to authorise and fund them, while politicians feel they need holes in the ground and cranes in the air to make their legacy and build confidence. 

The Suburban Rail Loop is genuinely popular. Opinion polls on transport projects rank it highly, somewhere near level crossing removals and Melbourne Airport Rail. SRL is seen as a way to ease suburban traffic congestion and transform our outdated entirely radial rapid public transport network. 

Expert and industry reaction was mixed. Big-thinking cosmopolitan urbanist and developer types were excited at SRL's potential to build Melbourne as a polycentric world city with great connectivity between denser suburban clusters. At last we would have genuine mass transit that didn't require backtracking via the CBD. And suburban politicians could tell their marginal seat voters that SRL meant more and better jobs nearer home.   

People who you might call the 'transport planning establishment' were less smitten. Those off the government's payroll were free to say it was a monster boondoggle with better uses for the money. Others privately agreed but knew which side their bread was buttered, so kept quiet. 

Some of the latter toil for months developing the case for projects worth a few million while SRL, costing ten thousand times more, gets waved through with less scrutiny. To the earnest planner who hopes for 'evidence-based policy' but only occasionally gets their projects funded, SRL was the bumptious queue jumper from nowhere that bashed its way into the public treasury with little more than a leader's backing. 

None of that worried the public. Possibly borrowing from his WA counterpart's 2017 success with Metronet, SRL was key to Daniel Andrews' 2018 re-election campaign. It worked, with a thin majority becoming a landslide. The government prides itself in meeting 'Big Build' infrastructure promises that critics thought impossible. Having done that, and with interest rates still then low, why not go even bigger?  Which they did. 

Thus SRL has become almost as much a totem for state Labor as the East-West Link freeway is for the Liberals. Regarding the latter, EWL support is the glue that holds Liberal members together, in contrast to differences over social policies. 

Howard era Liberal treasurer Peter Costello chairs Nine-Fairfax, the parent company of both Radio 3AW and The Age. No love is lost between Daniel Andrews and 3AW, notably its morning presenter Neil Mitchell. And, as well as the editorial, The Age has been running a series of articles raising doubts over the SRL. 

Some items have come from Marion Terrill of the Grattan Institute. Grattan claims to be an independent policy research body that 'takes the side of the public interest rather than interest groups'. Their writings have tended to be sceptical of megaprojects due to over-stated benefits and spiralling costs. 

I'm not unsympathetic inasmuch that Melbourne has done too little with low cost but high benefit local infrastructure such as cycleways, footpaths, roundabout removals, pedestrian crossings and extra station exits. We have also badly starved service with double the waits on our trains and trams and slower bus reform compared to Sydney. In other words we're terrible at working our existing assets hard, yet crave to build more.  

Unfortunately Grattan has tended to public transport scepticism, bagging big PT projects like the SRL while handling big driving-inducing freeway projects like North-East Link with kid gloves. And, like the State Opposition, neither have they suggested real alternatives to the SRL, which at least tries to address a real problem of our rapid public transport network being an asterisk rather than a more useful grid or web. We don't accept that with our roads so we shouldn't accept it with public transport. 

The Suburban Rail Link Authority has not universally endeared itself to key stakeholders. I covered the material raised in the EES hearings extensively in this thread. Its responses show a worrying dismissiveness towards real concerns raised by local mayors (and me right here) with regards to connectivity. It should not give reasons for  SRL-supporting stakeholders like councils to grow weary of it due to poor design choices early on. 

Due to long station spacing, SRL East adds just two new station locations to the rail network. The 8km gap between Southland and Clayton is particularly large for a suburban railway. Long gaps reduce the SRL's usefulness for shorter trips (of which there are typically more of than longer trips) and denies SmartBus routes like 903 on Warrigal Rd a 'network effect' benefit from having a nearby SRL station. And for those in between they mean significant backtracking to a station that, because it is an activity centre intersecting with Metro trains and with dense high-value land uses, won't (or shouldn't) have much commuter parking. 

If there were one or two intermediate stations added scope exists for not only better bus connectivity but some parking (ideally charged for) in locations where the opportunity cost of providing it is less. Having said that, such a station may still not get as much use as the others, and there is the precedent where even dense high-rise South Yarra was not considered deserving of a station on the Metro Tunnel. 

SRL's success is almost entirely dependent on connectivity from intersecting trains, trams and buses. Yet we are being told to accept walking times of six minutes to change between Metro and SRL trains at Southland. Melbourne's projects have a patchy record here so people are right to be wary of assurances given. If connectivity is not embedded from Day 1 then SRL risks not delivering its promised value. Failure could weaken advocacy for future public transport projects as detractors could use the SRL as a cautionary tale. 

RFI's Melbourne East-West Rail

A couple of years back RFI put forward an SRL alternative in their Melbourne Rail Plan 2020-2050. The emphasis here is spending less on one big corridor (the SRL) but spreading it over multiple corridors served by medium capacity transit such as light rail or bus rapid transit. Whatever mode is chosen the key need is that these services run frequent service on their own rights of way to achieve good speeds with good passenger connections to intersecting lines. If done right this could offer more suburban connection points per dollar spent. That's critical in a network with so few currently.

Yesterday RFI launched another proposal via The Age. In a release seen by Melbourne on Transit, they remarked that Victoria is unlikely to afford the concurrent cost of more than one major public transport project of (SRL's) scale and it would be tragic if another project is shown to be transformative with substantially wider benefits and needed far more urgently than Suburban Rail Loop.

RFI thinks it has such 'another project' in its Melbourne East-West Rail plan. It wants that started first. Their plan claims to redress the disparity in public transport supply between Melbourne’s burgeoning outer west and its eastern and southern suburbs. 

Whereas SRL Stage One is unapologetically about the east, the RFI plan looks inner and west. It delivers connectivity to Fishermans Bend, Sunshine and Spotswood instead of SRL hubs like Box Hill, Burwood and Clayton North. Its proposal is transport-heavy as opposed to SRL which emphasises precinct planning, especially around suburban universities and National Employment and Innovation Clusters. 

SRL, described in 2018 as a link between all major rail lines in Melbourne, also serves the west but only in later stages. And its alignment, funding and construction time remain vague. We also haven't heard much lately about Wyndham Vale and Melton electrification, new stations around Tarneit or even a modest Werribee line extension to Black Forest Road. Continued growth and shifting politics (including Labor's falling primary vote) opened a gap in the west that RFI has sought to address though its proposal.   

Existing major transport in the west (versus the east)

What transport service exists now on main routes in Melbourne's west? And how does it compare with what the east gets? Here's a quick snapshot. 

Despite fast population growth, the west has just one SmartBus versus the east's ten (including three orbitals). The orbital it does have (903) misses the west's biggest shopping centre at Highpoint, its biggest university at Footscray and one of its busiest rail lines (due to the lack of a station at Paisley for Werribee trains). 

Metro train service provision in the west is also lagging. No station west of Newport enjoys a frequent off-peak service as enjoyed on six corridors in the east. Waits between weekend trains at Wyndham Vale and Melton are 40 to 60 minutes as against the 20 minute frequency applying at Belgrave or the 10 minute frequency at Frankston. There even remains uncertainty over whether Metro Tunnel trains will much help frequency at Sunshine with the 2016 business case not being encouraging.    

As for infrastructure, the Geelong line is being asked to do too much. There is a need for stations in the City of Wyndham (eg either side of Tarneit and west of Werribee) but adding them would slow Geelong trips. Hence there is a need for an arrangement that optimises service of both needs. Meanwhile the area between Deer Park and Melton is rapidly filling with housing and will also justify its own suburban type service while retaining capacity and speed for Ballarat and beyond.  

Whatever else you might say about MEWR, the RFI's diagnosis of there being service gaps in the west appears correct. As is the SRL project's existing conditions claim about slow and unattractive north-south public transport in the east. Both schemes address real problems though you can debate whether they are the best responses or the highest priority. 

What is RFI's MEWR?

The Melbourne East-West Rail Plan involves a second cross-city / cross-Yarra Metro rail tunnel that will speed trains to Werribee, deliver suburban rail electrification to Melton and, in the longer term, bring trains to Wollert. 

Five more stations in Wyndham, faster Geelong services, new Fishermans Bend coverage and freed up capacity between Sunshine and the CBD are other stated benefits. MEWR also promises to make the rail system less radial, especially in the CBD fringe and inner west. 

How does it do this? MEWR would be a 14 km twin tunnelled rail that, in its Stage 1 form, starts at Fitzroy in Melbourne's inner north-east. It would then run south-west via underground stations at Parkville, Flagstaff, Southern Cross and Fishermans Bend to Spotswood. 

From there trains would branch into two. 

Half the trains would run as a suburban service to Melton via Sunshine. Tracks for these would stay underground through Spotswood, rising to the surface around West Kingsville. Freight tracks would remain but be moved if necessary to accommodate the new electrified passenger line pair.  

The other half would run to Wyndham Vale via new stations at West Werribee and Black Forest Rd on an extended Werribee line. 

The common portion would eventually handle 24 trains per hour in the peak, with half going each way west of Spotwood.  Initial capacity under Stage 1 would be 18 trains per hour with half on each leg. 

Trains from Laverton/Altona and Williamstown would go the existing way via Footscray. Most Geelong trains would revert to going this way but with greater separation from Werribee trains. However some would continue to go via the RRL and Sunshine to maintain connectivity. Diverting most Geelong trains frees up space for more RRL trains serving the City of Wyndham with up to 10 trains per hour allowed for. These would serve  three new stations including  Truganina, Tarneit North (Davis Rd) and Tarneit West (Sayers Rd). 

Key interchange points would include Parkville (to Metro Tunnel trains), Flagstaff (to City Loop trains), Southern Cross (to Metro and regional trains), and Spotswood (to Altona, Williamstown and most Geelong trains). 

Sunshine would become a real hub with trains available in no less than six directions (Geelong/Tarneit, Ballarat/Melton, Bendigo/Sunbury, Melbourne Airport, Footscray/Metro Tunnel and Spotswood/MM2). Footscray, Werribee and a new Black Forest Rd station would be smaller interchanges. 

The project has a bus dimension too. The interim Fizroy terminus would include an underground bus interchange for routes from the proposed Eastern Express Busway. A change to the train would provide faster access to destinations around Parkville, Flagstaff, Southern Cross and Fishermans Bend than staying on the bus and making a change in the CBD. 

Stage Two would build an eastern portion from Fitzroy to provide capacity for trains to Wollert, branching off the Mernda line at Lalor. Mernda trains would also use this tunnel. Those wanting Flinders Street could change trains at Croxton with this becoming a rail terminus.  

It's probably easier to see all this on the map below.  

The Melbourne East West Rail Plan (map supplied by RFI) - click for better view

Both the SRL Stage One and MEWR seek to solve real issues with Melbourne's rail network. Both are large scale, long-term projects. The difference is that SRL is about enabling efficient orbital travel and associated development (including potential intensification near stations) in the established east. Whereas MEWR seeks to add capacity, coverage and connectivity in the growing west, north and inner. Both have merit but RFI considers the latter more important. 

Other MEWR features

* New line to operate from 25kV with existing Newport West (Altona Junction) - Werribee converted from 1.5kV.

* Level crossing removals at Bulban and Browns Rd, Werribee. Construction to facilitate future level crossing removals at Francis St and Somerville Rd. 

* Provision for a future station at Brooklyn on the Spotswood - Sunshine line. This line will enter Sunshine via two new platforms on the southern side of existing RRL platforms. New side platforms at Ardeer and additional platforms at Deer Park would allow interchange. 

* Expansion of train stabling at Wyndham Vale and new stabling to be provided between Melton and Cobblebank. 

* A third non-electrified bidirectional track between Sunshine and Calder Park to increase capacity and speed for Bendigo trains. 

Timing

Work on the SRL has been going for nearly 4 years with construction now underway. Even though it would have a later start time, the RFI's plan has Stage 1 of its plan (ie Fitzroy - Wyndham Vale/Melton) being completed in 2035, the same year proposed for the SRL. However if the latter was done SRL would get deferred. Stage 2 (ie extension north of Fitzroy to Wollert) was stated as being done by 2039. 

The Melbourne East-West Plan lists a number of initiatives for completion in 2026 (ie the same year as we host the Commonwealth Games). Basically service upgrades, new stations, level crossing removals and new facilities, these include: 

* Metropolitan style frequencies (including off-peak, evening and weekend) for Wyndham Vale and Melton with Ballarat's 40 minute frequency extended to include evenings and weekends. 

* A connecting track pair from West Werribee to Wyndham Vale with Werribee electric trains extended. 

* New stations at West Werribee and Black Forest Rd with the latter including connectivity with Geelong trains. Also level crossing removals at Bulban and Browns Rd West Werribee and a train maintenance facility at West Werribee. 

* New stations at Truganina, Tarneit North (Davis Rd) and Tarneit West (Sayers Rd). Ardeer to be rebuilt with track re-alignment between Sunshine and Deer Park to enable a future additional track pair. 

Conclusion

There it is. RFI has produced a plan that promises to greatly improve rail services in Melbourne's growing west. With side benefits for some northern and north-eastern corridors along with inner area connectivity.  It ties together some major projects like MM2, the Western Rail Plan and faster Geelong trains. Along with ideas less talked about like Wollert and facilitating bus connectivity from the north-east. 

Its main barriers are political. Political change may well give it a tailwind with formerly safe areas like Melton and Werribee swinging strongly against Labor in 2018 and possibly even more so in 2022. 

On the other hand the Andrews government has committed to build SRL and is not known for turning. The Age article quoted a government spokeswoman saying that the existing infrastructure pipeline would deliver the same benefits as the RFI plan. 

But with rising debt, interest rates, labour shortages and project costs, the stomach to take on more mega-projects is likely less than four years ago. Melbourne has actually lost population recently and issues like health have risen to prominence. The Liberal / National opposition, meanwhile, has yet to show its hand in transport policy but said it would audit all projects worth over $100m. 

West/north/inner versus east. Which do you back and why? Or maybe an alternative arrangement would have benefits. Eg something involving Tarneit electrification but not what some might see as a kludge at Croxton.

Comments are welcome and can be left below.