UN 219: What to do about Richmond, South Yarra and North Melbourne?

The Metro Tunnel brought welcome rail coverage to three new inner area stations: Arden, Parkville and Anzac. However the rerouting of the Sunbury line from North Melbourne and Cranbourne/Pakenham line from Richmond and South Yarra without full compensatory boosts on other lines will reduce the number of trains serving three other key stations.   

Will this be an issue from when the new timetable starts on February 1, 2026?

It depends. 

North Melbourne isn't much of a destination but it is an interchange point between trains and buses  to the east (currently the 401 to Melbourne University). Some of its catchment will be served by Arden which will get Metro Tunnel services. 

Richmond is also an interchange point. Mainly between trains but there are trams and buses, including popular Route 246. It's not much of a destination at most times it comes to life during major sporting and other events.  

South Yarra is an interchange point to the 58 tram which connects to Anzac Station (and beyond). It's also a rail junction but less than North Melbourne or Richmond, with just two lines (Sandringham and Frankston) connecting there post February 1. Geometry is also poor for connectivity purposes with an acute angle between them and them roughly parallel for a bit. But unlike North Melbourne South Yarra is surrounded by substantial high-rise residential development. Some may use it to reach the northern part of the Chapel St precinct. 

Extent of service reductions

Below are tables showing the effect (in trains per hour) of removing Sunbury line services from North Melbourne and Pakenham/Cranbourne services from Richmond and South Yarra. These are shown for all major off-peak time periods. Peak frequencies are generally good so I've left them out.

The Big Switch column reflects existing service levels. For example Sunbury line trains are currently every 40 min (or 1.5 trains per hour) on Sunday mornings. Removing these from North Melbourne is a reduction of 1.5 trains per hour in this time band. 

The Later 2026 timetable reflects upgrades funded in the May 2025 state budget for Craigieburn, Upfield and Sandringham. Returning to the North Melbourne Sunday morning example this timetable will feature Upfield and Craigieburn going from every 40 to every 20 minutes, or 1.5 trains per hour more per line. Adding of 3 trains per hour more than offsets the effect of removing the Sunbury line, giving North Melbourne a Sunday morning service that's better than it's ever been.  

Changes in trains per hour arising from Metro Tunnel timetable changes

Sunday mornings at North Melbourne turn out to be the only time slot to get an overall gain. Weekday and weekend evenings at North Melbourne get an initial loss but bounce back thanks to the Craigieburn and Upfield line evening boosts (each adding 1 train per hour, offsetting the 2 trains per hour lost by moving the Sunbury line into the Metro Tunnel). 

But in all other cases, including during the day all week at North Melbourne and at all times at Richmond and South Yarra there are substantial service cuts. 

South Yarra gets the biggest proportional losses, with it going from 16 to 12 trains per hour midday weekdays and 15 to 9 trains per hour midday weekends. This is still relatively frequent but this is not so on weeknights where service falls from 9 to 6 trains per hour with the latter not necessarily evenly spaced.

A major drop in network functionality and legibility is that while the existing Cross-City group provides a flat 6 trains per hour between South Yarra and Newport with even 10 minute midday spacing, this will fall to just 3 trains per hour on weekends. This is a significant setback; Melbourne needs multiple cross-city lines running frequently all week, not just the Metro Tunnel. 

Richmond loses the same number of trains per hour in absolute terms as South Yarra but it's less in relative terms due to also being served by Belgrave, Lilydale and Glen Waverley trains. However Richmond also has high surge demand due to major events at and around the MCG. Many events finish at night when train frequencies thin out. 

Ways to restore frequency

How should service levels at North Melbourne, Richmond and South Yarra stations best be restored in a way that maximises network benefits? 

Given how busy it is relative to service levels, a further Craigieburn line service boost would have to be top priority out of all lines going through North Melbourne. With evenings and Sunday morning already dealt with the top priority would have to be a daytime upgrade from 20 to 10 minutes. This adds 3 trains per hour, neatly offsetting the reductions due to the Sunbury line's rerouting (table below).

Not insignificantly the 2016 Metro Tunnel Business Case Day 1 service plan recommended 10 minute service for both Craigieburn and Upfield but this is not reflected in either what's happening on February 1 nor later known funded upgrades. 

Doing a similar 3 to 6 trains per hour upgrade for either Werribee or Upfield would not just restore but increase North Melbourne's off-peak train frequency relative to now. 

Boosting the Craigieburn line from every 20 minutes to every 10 minutes seven days 

is necessary to restore service at North Melbourne (click for better view)

As for South Yarra and Richmond, a Sandringham line frequency boost would go part way to restoring service at both stations. Sandringham, unlike Craigieburn, already has funding to boost its weekday frequency (from 15 to 10 min or 4 to 6 tph). This confines Sandringham's need to better Sunday morning services (from 40 to 20 min) and a weekend daytime boost (from 20 to 10 minutes), making it relatively cheap. The latter has the further advantage of restoring the 10 minute cross city route to Newport as currently runs from the more consistently frequent Frankston line.  

The above Sandringham line upgrade is good but not enough, especially at night and especially for Richmond. Shifting the Pakenham/Cranbourne line from there to the Metro Tunnel makes the Belgrave/Lilydale line the busiest. Unfortunately its basic service levels haven't changed for years and it has a very complex weekday timetable. This makes it, rather than the other lines that go through Richmond the best candidate for a service upgrade. Touching the peak timetable involves complexities but the off-peak upgrade aspect is again relatively cheap in terms of annual train kilometres added.  

Such an upgrade might entail boosting interpeak weekdays from every 15 to every 10 minutes to add an extra two trains per hour. This has benefits going all the way out to Belgrave and Lilydale with their weekday frequency boosted from 30 to 20 minutes (which matches existing weekend service levels).

Evenings also need an upgrade to provide a robust dependable timetable suitable for all events in the area - not just the biggest that get extra trains operated. Possibly the best way to do this is to replicate the Cranbourne/Pakenham/Dandenong Metro Tunnel arrangement for Belgrave/Lilydale/Ringwood. That would give Ringwood a train every 10 minutes or better from early morning to late at night with an end to forced transfers. As an option that could be carried through to Night Network with Belgrave and Lilydale each getting hourly trains and Ringwood a 30 minute service. 

The effects of this are shown below. Richmond gets a good (though still slightly reduced) midday service with 10 minute service to Sandringham, Frankston and Ringwood. Evening service is improved on both weekdays and weekends with a 10 minute service to Ringwood in conjunction with the existing 20 minute services to Frankston and Sandringham. South Yarra still doesn't get all its service restored but gets some better consistency, especially on weekend evenings and Sunday mornings. 

Boosting the Sandringham line on weekends and Sunday mornings along with more weekday midday and evening Ringwood trains can help restore service at Richmond and South Yarra. (click table for better view)

Station entrances 

Despite being busy urban stations all three stations have their walking catchments severely reduced by having just a single full time entrance. 

This is unlike Metro Tunnel stations like Parkville, State Library and Town Hall where significant effort and expense was made to provide multiple entrances. And some relatively quiet LXRP-rebuilt stations such as on the Frankston line got multiple entrances. 

North Melbourne has a potential convenient (though not DDA compliant due to steep ramps) northern entry point that is currently closed despite allowing a more direct walk to Arden. It is likely (though not confirmed) that Route 241 bus will provide this connection though for such short trips buses won't necessarily save time compared to if a direct walk was possible.  

Richmond has an events only entrance at its northern end. This improves access to Route 246 bus - one of just a handful of Melbourne bus routes that runs every 10-15 minutes seven days a week. However this entrance cannot be relied on with there being times (even when there are major events) when it is closed. 

South Yarra has a single southern entrance. While convenient to the tram it has a high density residential catchment whose residents need to backtrack considerably to reach its platforms due to a lack of a northern entrance. 

Having consistently open or adding entrances at busy single-entrance stations surrounded by dense land uses increases increases the rail network's walking catchment for a much lower cost (and speed penalty) than adding new intermediate stations on existing lines. 

Conclusion

North Melbourne, Richmond and South Yarra will get significant service cuts on the day of the Big Switch for the Metro Tunnel (February 1, 2026). The timetable improvements slated for later in 2026 will reverse a few. 

However a further timetable boost, involving further off-peak frequency upgrades for at least Craigieburn, Sandringham and Belgrave/Lilydale, will be needed to restore service levels at these key stations. This would benefit not just the stations mentioned but deliver 10 minute all week frequency on 6 rather than 3 main corridors. 

Keeping Richmond's northern entrance open at all times, reopening North Melbourne's northern entrance and investigating a northern entrance for South Yarra would also greatly improve access and connectivity. 

Index to Useful Network items here

Metro Tunnel has opened: Here's some videos

After nearly a decade in construction, Melbourne's Metro Tunnel took its first public passengers on Sunday November 30, 2025.

Many made videos on it, including me. 

I actually did two; one 'serious', spoken and structured and the other rawer, unspoken and unstructured.

Let's take a look before concluding with thoughts on how to maximise the project's benefits. 

Watch this first

My first gives a history of not just the Metro Tunnel but also metropolitan rail planning and infrastructure. We essentially went from a versatile, frequent all day and almost metro-style (but still highly radial) network in the 1930s to one that was heavily geared to suburban - CBD commuter trips.

This was reflected in the type of projects and improvements that happened. For example the proposed through-city line from 1929 was like how a Metro would be structured with simple frequent service and a reliance on connections. This didn't get built due to Great Depression and WWII austerity along with the switch to driving and suburbanisation after the war.

Whereas the City Loop (that did get built) was designed and funded when commuter thinking peaked as rail's main role (and the only one that deserved investment). Hence the system was structured to get commuters into the CBD in the morning and out again in the afternoon with no expense spared to offer the opportunity of a one seat ride from all lines. But it made some trips worse with its midday reversal an embarrassment.     

Fast forward to now and the City Loop is as much a hindrance as a help for the frequent, versatile and simple all day rail network that modern cities need. So there has been an effort to bypass the loop by (a) creating a cross-city group to form the first cross-city line and (b) build a Metro Tunnel to form a second cross-city line.

The third and fourth cross-city lines are likely to come from (c) the relatively cheap but capacity increasing City Loop Reconfiguration (as proposed by Infrastructure Victoria and others) and (d) the much dearer Metro 2 which proposes to connect the west and north-east.  

Essentially we had the right idea regarding rail planning in the 1920s, lost our way 40 years later but got  it back again 40 years after that when the Metro Tunnel became an official policy. There were some shaky moments when an alternative scheme ('Melbourne Rail Link') that did not as much benefit the CBD core and Parkville got adopted but luckily that didn't happen.   

The political accommodation reached was to build the Metro Tunnel deep to minimise construction disruption (but increase costs). This adds walking time from the surface compared to if it was shallower. 

But it does mean that if you want to maximise Metro Tunnel benefits and permit tram reform (for further gains) then the service must be run very frequently all day. That means every 5 minutes in at least its core rather than the 10 minutes chosen. 

For the Metro Tunnel to form part of a coherent network the other lines it connects to need to run every 10 minutes or better out to about 30km from the CBD with branches never worse than 20 minutes from early morning to late at night. Buses also need to be much better for those not near a station.

Because to date this government hasn't been very strong on metropolitan service uplifts the rest of the rail and bus network is a long way from this, with gaps of 30 and 40 minutes still widespread. Some improvements are planned for 2026 but they're not enough by themselves as you can see animated below (as maximum waits early morning to midnight across the week). Click for bigger view.

Watch for first day colour and emotion

A look at the first day of the 'Summer Start', Sunday November 30, 2025. The video starts at Sunbury, boarding the first train to enter the Metro Tunnel. You can feel the enthusiasm and get an insight into gunzel culture at probably the biggest ever gathering of rail fans on the one day. You can also see the insides of station at Parkville, State Library and Town Hall. 

Videos from others 

Here are some of the best of the many videos others have made about the Metro Tunnel.  

Detailed description of Metro project done about a year ago

First trip from the east and second from west with new stations toured

First day coverage of the new stations and trips

Excellent commentary on the first trip from west and challenges ahead

Summary

The Metro Tunnel will be a great thing for Melbourne. 

The priority must now be to maximise its benefits across all areas and honour the work many have done over the better part of two decades. 

This requires a 4 point better service plan as follows: 

* 20 minute maximum waits on the entire Melbourne rail network from early morning to midnight 7 days a week (including Melton and Geelong V/Line) to provide a basic 'safety net' level of service. Needing only a small percent more extra train trips per week, this is super cheap and should be done ASAP to remove existing 30, 40 and even 70 min gaps.

* 10 minute all week frequencies at most Metro stations to cut connection times further. Needs a staged plan, likely starting with Ringwood and Craigieburn. 

* Major bus service upgrades to provide a simpler more frequent 7 day network. Largely weekend boosts to existing popular routes with some network simplification to improve directness and frequency. 

* 5 minute all week frequencies for the Metro Tunnel core to enable cascading CBD area tram network reform including some desirable extensions for Arden, Anzac and North Melbourne.

The above are highly cost-effective in terms of the size and distribution of benefits provided. And they are essential to make the construction disruptions we've had over the last decade truly worth it. 

TRAINS TRAINS TRAINS: First Day of Metro Tunnel (Sun Nov 30, 2025)

 Watch it here