THE idea that the Rowville line can’t be built without a $5 billion metro tunnel is nonsense (”Monash Uni train line plan derailed”, The Age, 9/3). The line was included in the 1969 transport plan, which gave us the City Loop, but did not say an extra tunnel from South Yarra was required: only some lesser upgrades at a fraction of the cost. It also suggested the Dandenong line would have 24 peak-hour services in 1985. Today it has 16, including two V/Line trains.
Read the rest of this article »

Some things never change.

Rod Eddington is still spruiking the east-west road tunnel, even though his own report in 2008 said it would return just 45c in benefits for every dollar spent on it.

We can now see that the assumptions underlying the East West report were flawed.

Metlink reports that public transport use grew to 1.4 million trips a day in 2010, a level Eddington said would not be reached until 2031.

Meanwhile, federal government figures show that overall car travel in Melbourne has not increased since 2004.
Read the rest of this article »

In a letter in today’s Age, PTUA Secretary Tony Morton responds to the Auditor-General’s criticism of the Peninsula Link motorway, and the recognition of induced traffic — and asks why the road is being built when public transport is so hopeless.

THE Auditor-General has officially confirmed what sustainable-transport advocates have long known: Victoria lags decades behind the rest of the world when assessing transport projects (“Auditor hits $2b road project”, The Age, 2/6).

In the UK, the “induced demand” from new roads was officially recognised in 1994. Since then, all motorway proposals have had to take into account the new traffic they create.

Yet in Victoria, planners still promote the benefits of new roads by reference to travel-time savings that only come about if no one takes advantage of the road to drive more often, or to drive further. Most transport economists and planners outside Australia recognise that the only effective measure to cut congestion is to improve alternatives to car travel, including first-rate public transport.

But in the parallel universe inhabited by our transport planners, it’s better to destroy irreplaceable heritage bushland for a road and flood the southern peninsula with cars than do anything about the woeful 75-minute weekend frequency on the only bus service to the region.

Tony Morton, Public Transport Users Association, Melbourne

Route 788 to Melbourne’s playground runs only every 75 minutes on weekends, and every 45 minutes on weekdays — even in peak hour — meaning not only long waits between buses, but no reliable connection to trains at Frankston station.

Help our campaign for better public transport. Join the PTUA now. We rely entirely on member funding and enthusiastic volunteers to operate.

More about PT Problem Of The Day, including how you can contribute your photos.

JASON Dowling’s defence of the Regional Rail Link (Comment, 22/2) essentially asserts that a project costing about $5 billion must be a good thing.

What began as a line on a map in the Eddington report has evolved secretly and fitfully. We still have no idea how train services will be organised, but we do know that many passengers will actually be disadvantaged by the project as it is configured.

The basic problem is that it tries to be both a regional and a suburban project. New stations at Tarneit will be served by crowded Geelong trains making extra stops. Tarneit residents won’t get the same frequency of service as other metropolitan rail users.
Read the rest of this article »

MELISSA Fyfe (”It’s time to help commuters make their connection”, 3/10) points out the basic weakness afflicting Melbourne public transport: the lack of an independent, publicly accountable authority to co-ordinate trains, trams and buses.

Groups as diverse as the Greens, privatisation experts and former train and tram operators support a lean, expert body to plan a public transport network for Melbourne. The benefits have been demonstrated in cities from Perth to London.
Read the rest of this article »

CRAIG Langdon has kept his promise to voters to resign if a freeway through Heidelberg became Victorian Labor policy (”Freeway dissenter urges referendum”, The Age, 26/8). But how awkward that he’s left it until three months before the election rather than standing down in 2008 when plans were announced.
Read the rest of this article »

THE RACV wants us to believe that while WestLink may not be economically viable on its own, the full east-west freeway link would be (”Freeway not worth the cost: report”, The Age, 21/5). But it is not so: the Eddington study in 2008 found that the full East-West freeway had a benefit-cost ratio of just 0.5.

No amount of phoney ”benefits” and goalpost-shifting was able to generate a payoff to match the enormous cost of building the thing.
Read the rest of this article »

Our letter as published in today’s Age was edited, which has subtly changed the intent. Below is the original letter as submitted:

Peter Fisher and Len Puglisi (Opinion, 18/3) are correct that density is not a panacea for car dependence. Los Angeles is a denser city than Melbourne but hardly rates on the sustainable transport front.

Shifting from car use to public transport is not a magical outcome of denser living, but happens when public transport is organised into high-quality networks which serve not just CBD travel, but trips in all directions. In Melbourne these networks are found only in inner-suburban areas with reasonably frequent tram services.
Read the rest of this article »

Despite the understandable concerns of peak hour train commuters, Metro Trains should be commended for wanting to double train patronage by 2020.

It shows there is more capacity to be squeezed out of the network, and smarter timetabling can get more trains on to the tracks.

But there will be no doubling of peak hour trips to the CBD. The vast majority of CBD commuters already use public transport, and the peak hour commuting population is only expected to grow by 20 per cent to 2020, according to City of Melbourne projections.
Read the rest of this article »

Mayor Robert Doyle’s ”Damascus” conversion on Swanston Street has led to a good plan. But on design and location of tram stops, it lets the city down badly.
Read the rest of this article »