This post is mostly a very quick look at optimisation of the Melbourne Rail Network.

As we know, the current setup has approximately 16 lines converging onto four single track loops into the CBD, which creates a signficant bottleneck, reduces operational efficiency and can lead to cascade delays very rapidly. (a cascade delay is where one train runs late, causing every train behind it to run progressively later, and can really only be stopped by cancellation and transpositioning trains).

This proposal breaks the four Melbourne sectors into 7 sectors, (8 including interurban/intercity) and increasing frequency, using predominately the existing rollingstock and only minor additional infrastructure. This is shown in the image below

This proposal assumes the following: (figures from VicSig)

To do this i’ve had to make a sample/hypothetical timetable for the groups which probably have some mistakes within them, and i freely admit this) – to show that the proposal is vaugely workable. Each will be discussed very briefly below.

Upfield Line – 8tph – 10 trains required.

two new crossovers at Gowrie to enable trains to Upfield to bypass Stopper
Cost $2 million.

Sydenham Line – 12tph – 14trains required

Upgrade to Sydenham Station turnback facilities – 5million (Enable fast shunts into yard to minimise blocking of main line for Bendigo/Kyenton trains)

Seymour Line – 7 trains required. 1tph 2tph peaks – No upgrades

Werribee-Sandringham Line – 16 trains required – 6tph

Cragieburn – Frankston – 22 trains required – 6tph

Upgrade to Broadmeadows Line Flyover – Indicative cost 10million. (to enable Cragieburn trains to enter track 5-6 without interfering with Werribee trains.

Ringwood Group – 32 trains required – 6tph (3 stopping patterns)

Increase dual track for an additional 1000m south of Lilydale Station to enable 10minute service – 10 million.

Pakenham Line – 34 trains required. (6tph (3 stopping patterns)


4th Platform at Dandenong – 10million
3rd Platform at Pakenham 10 million
Central Westall Turnback (Under Construction?)

Glen Waverley Line – No upgrades – 6tph

Geelong and Newport Shuttles 6tph (Geelong/Williamstown) 3tph (Altona)

3rd Platform at Newport (Preferably 4 however) 10 million

Clifton Hill Group – 12tph Greensborough, 6tph Epping, 1tph Eltham, 1tph Hurstbridge

Dock Platform at Greensborough – 10million

Bendigo Line – No Upgrades 2tph Kyenton/Bendigo

Belgrave Line – 6tph

Additional Points at Ringwood to enable platform 3 to be separated from running lines 2million

So for 70 million in additional infrastructure you can separate out the lines and increase frequency on all lines (when additional rollingstock is ordered), increase reliability with the exisitng rollingstock (assuming Vicsig’s numbers are correct). Though that said some of the timings used are very tight, and probably wouldnt be feasible in the real world, but as a discussion point, is usable.

This shows that there can be an increase in services operating without the Eddington Tunnel, with predominately existing infrastructure. The Sandringham/Frankston groups could recieve a doubling of service without any additional infrastructure, and the Clifton Hill Group requires duplication to Epping for increased services.

Thoughts?

When the 2009 state budget actually committed funding to it, the price had dropped slightly to $562 million, but this was due to the initial figure including running costs, apparently for several decades. Even counting the duplication from Keon Park to Epping at the same cost as the extension, it was still five times higher than the per-kilometre cost of the Craigieburn project completed just two years ago.

A feature article in The Age in June highlighted the issue, with local activists delighted at the commitment but mystified over the price, the opposition claiming taxpayers are being dudded, and public transport advocates (such as myself) fearing that the high price will discourage governments from future rail extensions. The Department of Transport offered the explanation that the project was a “more holistic approach to scoping the expansion of the Epping line”, but apparently didn’t clarify this in any great detail.

We (the PTUA) subsequently met with the Department, and finally discovered the real truth behind the term “holistic”. It turns out the scope of work is much bigger than just the South Morang extension plus duplication from Keon Park.

The way it was described, it includes:

• Keon Park to Epping
  • duplication, obviously including track and overhead
  • two or three pedestrian grade-separations
  • station upgrades, and an additional platform at Thomastown
  • upgrades to 4 level crossings to latest standard
  • resignalling, including removal of bidirectional signalling on the existing single track (it conflicts with the proposed location of the second track), and re-signalling most of the rest of the line, almost down to Clifton Hill
  • stabling at Epping, with driver facilities to enable future changeovers to move away from Flinders St
  • extra substations
• Epping to South Morang
  • dual track, overhead. We were told the old alignment can’t be used without modification, as there are grade separations and other issues with it
  • signalling
  • Dalton Road grade separation. Due to proximity of Epping train maintenance facilities (which can’t be moved), relocation of local roads (which can’t be disconnected from Dalton Rd) and the nearest creek (which the track must get over), this is said to be a reasonably complicated component, on a similar scale to Springvale Road grade separation
  • 3 bridges over creeks
  • bike/ped path along rail route, and included in bridges
  • grade separation of Pindari Avenue and Civic Drive
  • a new substation
  • communications systems including radio towers
  • South Morang station, including bike, bus, car parking, and provision for further extension to Mernda
• Hurstbridge line
  • signalling upgrades on parts of line, to help harmonise frequencies to work better with the Epping/South Morang line
  • stabling at Eltham, including driver facilities, and which will require the moving of some existing trackwork

The scope of works goes some way to explaining the cost. Perhaps it doesn’t bring it down to the level of Perth’s Mandurah line, but at the very least it brings it back down to somewhere near Planet Earth.

It seems to makes some sense to include in the project scope upgrades that will help the rest of the Clifton Hill group run better. If things turn out to plan, in 2013 (just in time for the 2014 state election) the benefits should be felt not just to residents in South Morang, but also elsewhere along the Epping and Hurstbridge lines.

What is a real mystery is why the Department doesn’t publicise the true scope of the project. While the information is apparently no secret, as a number of groups have been briefed on the project breakdown, neither has it been made public.

Surely flagging the real scope of the project, with all the resultant benefits, would be better for the government than hiding the details away and having major newspapers writing feature articles highlighting the apparent cost overruns and implying incompetent project management.

I’ve blogged a few times on what I see as the paradox of a dying government with a history of poor decision-making and inappropriate relationships – actually getting it right.

How is it I can say it is right when:

-the route is incomplete and somewhat hard to justify

-the cost seems exhorbitant for the short length involved

-the outcry from those areas that missed out, such as the NW suburbs, is deafening

-and the federal Infrastructure Department found it so wanting, it missed out on funding?

My answer to this paradox is: because they have got the service model and technology right – and everything else is something that can wait for another day.

Why is this important? Because Australia has had, for a very long time, perhaps since the beginning, a misconceived and misapplied approach to rail planning and investment, and a poor operating culture, which incremental investment approaches have only perpetuated.

A dying government, in its last days and with little financial or planning credibility left, has actually thrown the right spanner in the works, called a halt to the Australian rail paradigm once and for all. A commendable step. We’ll have to see if this line survives the transition to a Liberal Government.

Planning:

First of all, the Sydney Metro gives primacy, above all, to addressing congestion issues: the primary motivator for sensible passenger rail investment in Australia. Where the people are in abundance, that’s where rail needs to be. Not where they vote (still not many voters in the CBD itself to fill with pork). Not in areas of ‘deprivation’ or those areas deemed worthy by social workers or whatever.

The system is aimed specifically at two types of congestion – rail congestion on the Cityrail system, especially at the existing stations of Town Hall and Wynyard. I will confess I would like to see more work on how these two stations could be modified to improve capacity, but I accept the basic premise, and wonder at the danger of having 6 platforms, loaded with full double deck trains, and a fire breaking out. How would you clear that many people?

The other form of congestion is of course road congestion. Victoria Road, especially from Gladesville inwards, is one of Sydney’s busiest road corridors that is not freeway, nor has a parallel rail alternative. Again, I can foresee alternatives to a metro on this route – but support the fundamental view that it is congestion visibly driving the investment. A turn-up-and-go 100% reliable and quick rail service to the CBD will be very competitive with driving on the route, and steal much  market share.

Secondly, the Sydney metro is planned as an expandable system. You might say “aren’t they all” but it is clear to me that some rail enhancements in Australia are anything but. Look at Melbourne’s City Loop for example.

Expandable doesn’t just mean route length – it means that you can ramp up services perhaps 5 fold over the original brief. An off the shelf metro, as planned for Sydney, has a starting spec of 5 minute headways, but can likely take 1 minute headways if and when it gets busy enough to do so. This is amazing. Can Melbourne’s City Loop accommodate a 5-fold increase in traffic? Granted, it was set up to accommodate 3 minute headways, but seems to struggle as it closes on that mark. The rest of the Sydney system cannot cope with service expansions.

The easy wins, such as going from single to double deck, started in the 60s and were complete in the 80s. There is still more need for track amplification but some key locales, for example Strathfield to the City, will not cope.

Sourcing

The realisation that Australia is not the place for custom manufacture of rail track and rollingstock has only taken 150 odd years to percolate into the transport bureaucracies. Rail innovators need some core characteristics – considerable existing support for rail, a risk taking culture, and environments that actually require innovation (such as the need for speed). Australia has none of those three things, and any rail innovation in urban areas is doomed as a result.

It becomes an ugly ducking (Melbourne’s 4D), a political target (the Tangaras in Sydney) or destined to never reach its potential (XPT). I’ll grant the Sydney double deck interurban (Comeng V-set) program has been a raging success over the years, possibly due to the ‘actually requiring innovation’ criterion being met, due to the large pool of Central Coast and Blue Mountains commuters.

Sydney’s metro, by being promoted blatantly as off-the-shelf, turns that 150 years of culture on its head and gives the planners the confidence that outcomes will be met, and the public the confidence that it will be just like the ones they’ve ridden overseas.

Operation

The planned operation of the system is just out of the Transport Textbook, with most of my training track concepts adopted (not that I invented any of them!) I sometimes wondered if I was going crazy, pointing these things out in hostile places like Railpage only to have seasoned posters in that place suggest that these things don’t matter. Clearly they do, and when the chequebook is open wide enough for someone to implement them, they are.

These concepts include:

-a published service standard (which happens to be TUAG, but that is not the point, the point is that it is published, unlike say the service standard to Penrith, which is what?

-a service standard of TUAG

-realisation that dedicated rollingstock are needed for the line (fitting the rollingstock to the line)

-single deck stock (high density and high speed loading and unloading)

-cross platform interchange and no single seat journeys

-dedicated operator, not part of Cityrail. I maintain that it is the passenger’s job to change vehicle and the coordinating authority’s job to plan interchanges and timetabling, but it does not matter who operates the vehicle as long as they achieve the service standard applying to the service.

Of course the other key operational characteristic is driverless operation. I won’t turn this into a union-bashing thread, but it is clear that the union parasite has killed its Cityrail host. Unless is can be removed, there is no way the sorts of operational improvements Cityrail needs can be implemented, especially with a dying Labor government at the helm. These people will be thinking about their lives after political office, and won’t be making enemies in the union movement between now and then. But it will be hard for the union to argue for drivers in a system that can run without them.

Funding

While it is regrettable the money is not available to extend the system further, it appears to me that a ‘line in the sand’ has been drawn against Treasury whiteanting, and the money, though exhorbitant, is somehow quarantined for the project. Contracts and so on are clearly being drawn up so that the Libs can’t overturn them without considerable expense (although there are plenty of precedents in Sydney including Maldon-Dombarton, several iterations of the Eastern Suburbs line and so on).

In marketing terms, I’ve noticed the Government ’sticking to its guns’. Clearly someone in charge believes what they are doing – a pleasant change for a Melbournian used to plastic smiles and thinly veneered spin.

Conclusion

The project has a lot to be critical of, but I believe I have pointed out that, at its heart, it is the right project. The right technology, the right operational setup, the right planning approach and acceptance of core transport truisms about what make urban transport tick. I’ll hold judgement on whether the right funding model and right terminus have been adopted. I do have every confidence the outcome is somewhere between ‘no regrets’ and ’should have done it decades ago’.

I fear more for Melbourne which, if current plans are accurate, has not learnt the lessons of 150 years of pain and grief. If we see Siemens electrics running through to Sunbury on tracks shared with Vline and freight, but then pretending to deliver a ‘metro’ service under the city, then they have learnt nothing – from the City Loop debacle, or from the Dandenong line dramas, or even from the period of decline and marginalisation in the 1970s and 80s, when commuter rail so demonstrably failed to meet the needs of a changing city, yet was so admirably clung to by bureaucrats and unions alike.

The Regional Rail Link

The Regional Rail Link sends Geelong services from West Werribee via Tarneit to Deer Park, where they join the Melton Line heading to the city. From Sunshine, an additional pair of tracks will be provided for these trains, as well as other V/Line trains from Ballarat, Bendigo and the North East. Under the Eddington report, my understanding was that at West Footscray, the line would take the former Sydenham line tracks (to be tunnelled?; but the VTP has pushed this point over the Maribynrong. There, the line would take the former Sydenham tracks, and a flyover would be built at North Melbourne to eliminate interworking with metropolitan services. It’s costed in excess of $4 billion.

Is it a good idea?

Well yes and no. The good part involves the provision of an extra pair of tracks From Sunshine to  Footscray, but the bad part involves the reliance on the construction of the rail tunnel from Dynon to get into the city, as well as the line from West Werribee to Deer Park .

I think an extra pair of tracks from Sunshine to the city, carrying V/Line services from Ballarat, Bendigo and the North East (and I mean all North Eastern trains when the Albion line broad gauge gets amalgamated into a double track dual gauge line) is well worthwhile. The Sydenham line can’t cope very well as is, and the need for frequent services coupled with trains from 3 country lines makes an additional pair of tracks a sensible addition to the network. However, space through Footscray is constrained and new surface tracks would be hard to lay. Additionally,  VTP builds a rail tunnel from Dynon to Domain interchange (and eventually Caulfield) to give the Sydenham line tracks from Dynon to the Regional Rail Link. Not only is the tunnel deeply flawed (as I will detail later), but it is highly contingent on federal funding. Victoria wants $10 billion from the Commonwealth to fund the VTP, but the entire Building Austraila Fund is only $20 billion. It would seem unlikely they will get the money they want, putting the tunnel at risk. If the tunnel is cancelled and part of the Regional Rail Link is dependent on it, there will be problems.

The Tarneit section of the link has generated much discussion since it was released in the Eddington Report. I’ve detailed the reasons for my opposition to it here – but ultimately it’s a lot of money to be spending on a line that will carry relatively little traffic unless there’s a substantial increase in long range commuting. Moreover the link does nothing to fix flat junction and single track bottlenecks on the metropolitan section of the line – where the real patronage is.

Indeed, for all the talk about the Geelong line being a highly patronised rail corridor, it’s important to remember that the line only carried 3.08 million passengers in 07-08, compared to the in excess of 200 million carried by the metropolitan rail system. Even if Werribee carried only 1/20th of that patronage (10 million), it’s still over three times what Geelong carries.

Alternatives

For the Sunshine – city extra tracks, the government has got it about right from Sunshine to West Footscray. But Eddington wanted to tunnel from West Footscray, and the VTP wants to cut an additional pair of tracks through Footscray before the tunnel somewhere in North Dynon. If we assume that the tunnel is 1) a bad idea; and 2) not likely to be built, there clearly needs to be an alternative. The alternative is the Bunbury St. freight tunnel. It would be perfect to use for regional rail services but for the fact that it carries interstate freight. But the tunnel doesn’t allow double stacking, meaning that the ARTC is probably going to have to replace it in future anyway. If a new freight tunnel allowing double stacking could be built from West Footscray to South Dynon, the old freight line could be used for the Regional Rail Link, removing the need for works from West Footscray to North Melbourne. This plan would substantially reduce the scope of works required from Footscray to the city, with the main scope of works modifying the exiting flyover at North Melbourne. The tunnel, at 2.5km long, would cost in the order of $867.5 million based on Eddington costs, or $196.8 million based on Epping-Chatswood costs. But we have to remember that the freight tunnel completely removes the requirement for expensive works at Footscray or a rail tunnel for the Sydenham (by then Sunbury) line at Dynon. These plans are shown below.

For an alternative to the Tarneit link, I’d spend the money on duplication and removal of flat junctions on the Werribee, and the construction of a tunnel under the Yarra to Fishermans Bend if there’s money to burn. It’s set out in more detail here though.

cheers, Phin

______________________________________________________________

Calculating and comparing per km construction costs for South Morang.

The South Morang extension has two parts – building the extension from Epping to South Morang and duplicating Keon Park to Epping. The two most recent government cost estimates don’t differentiate between them in the publicly available data. But the first one (2003) does, and estimates that 60% of costs for the project would be taken up on the 5km long Keon Park – Epping duplication, with the remaining 40% spent on the 3.25km Epping – South Morang extension. If we assume that the distribution of costs between duplication and extension has remained constant over time (with 60% of total costs spent on the former), we can easily divide the later estimates between duplication and extension and then obtain a per km cost for both. These costs are shown in the table below.

This can be taken a step further, and these costs can be compared with per km estimates for other government reports and actual projects; Eddington and Mandurah respectively. Note that I’ve used the South Morang construction cost for comparison – but the duplication cost is largely similar so it doesn’t make much of a difference anyway.

Possible explanations

These most recent cost estimates are clearly considerably higher than anything I’ve seen They’re basically double the Eddington and May 2008 South Morang per km estimates – and at the time I railed against both of these as exorbitant (pun very much intended). I see three potential explanations. Firstly, The Age simply could have got the numbers wrong; they have had some rather serious troubles recently and this could perhaps be another manifestation of them. But all the other costs cited in the article checked out – time will tell on this one I suppose. Secondly, extra works could have been added to the scope of the project. Perhaps the line is now planned to to all the way to Mernda and Aurora North, or the costs include a crazy plan for additional tracks between Clifton Hill and the city, or a redevelopment of the area surrounding Epping station (which would involve moving the rail workshops), or some other extra plan. Again, we just don’t know at this point – and probably won’t know until construction starts as government transport reports seem to be very opaque on where the money goes. Thirdly, someone in the corridors of power could simply have got it very very wrong. If they have I’d really like to be a rail construction contractor about now.

So assuming the government is prepared to spend about $1 billion on Western Suburbs rail capacity, what’s the best way to do it? Tarneit certainly isn’t, especially if they don’t put 4 tracks in from Sunshine to the city – which they can’t under Eddington’s recommendations because he wants a tunnel from West Footscray. In this short series of posts, I’m going to look at how capacity, frequency and usability can be maximised for the western suburbs on a shoestring budget. I’m not advocating these proposals to be the entirety of the works undertaken, but if there’s only a little bit to spend it’s absolutely worth discussing how to spend it most efficiently. In this post I’ll be looking at the Werribee, WIlliamstown and Altona lines.

Currently, these lines suffer from poor service quality, both against best practice and the standard of many other parts of Melbourne’s rail system. Werribee, having operated as a single line with Altona since the mid 1980s, is suffering substantial congestion as well as unreliability and poor frequency due to single track sections through Altona and the mixing with V/Line services to Geelong and beyond. Although, Werribee has 5 tph peak on paper, bunching of services sees a potentially high median wait time and poorly dispersed crowds. Williamstown is uncongested as far as Newport, but 20 minute peak/daytime offpeak headways make it unviable for all but captive passengers.

In looking to upgrade these lines (and indeed any) while on a budget, I’ve tried to aim for a minimum acceptable service standard (a train every 10 minutes, evenly spaced, all day) and a high level of reliability through segregation of services. This creates winners and losers, but the aim is to make aggregate utility for the winners outweigh the aggregate disutility for the losers. That means that lines can be cut back to shuttles and certain trips may be slower, but that the aggregate outcome will be much better.

The biggest problems on the line

The biggest infrastructure constraints are at Laverton, Altona Junction, Newport and North Melbourne; as well as the single track through Altona. Laverton and Altona Junction feature at grade crossings for the Altona branch to merge into the mainline. The former will be removed by 2011 with the construction of an extra platform and track at Laverton. Why it will take three years to build, at the cost of $92.6 million (when the Deer Park bypass – 9.3km of high standard freeway – will only cost $331 million) is completely beyond me, but I digress. Newport sees a conflict between Werribee/Geelong and Williamstown services; North Melbourne creates conflicts getting into the loop (now partly fixed); and the single track on the Altona substantially hampers the capacity for local services. Clearly these problems need to be the highest priority. Even if the Tarneit link were built, these would all still be a problem for metropolitan services.

Works required

The main line to Werribee and beyond clearly needs to be separated from the Altona and Williamstown lines, as well as from other lines between North Melbourne and Southern Cross. V/Line services need to have an easier time interworking with Werribee services.

There are many ways to achieve these objectives, but my goal here is to do it as cheaply as possible while enabling a decent (10 minute headway at worst) service standard. In addition to the new platform at Laverton, the 7.1km long Altona branch would require duplication to achieve 10 minute headways. An extra pair of tracks would be required all the way to Newport to solve the Altona junction problem, around 1.5km of new double track. A new station at Maddox Rd could be constructed on the branch.

A cheap solution to the Newport problem would be to run Altona and Williamstown as shuttles to Newport and build them their own dock platform. Newport station and its envrions are a bit of a mess, and if a link were built through Fishermans Bend substantial reorganisation would be required. Given the lack of need for 6 car trains on these short branches and the importance of not spending large sums of money on infrastructure which could be ripped up in the next couple of decades, I’d advocate a simple three car platform at the south-eastern side of the station. The layout of this is shown below – it would require basically only a platform and a canopy.

At the city end, Geelong and Werribee services need to be segregated from other lines. A cheap way of doing this would be to give them exclusive use of platforms 5 and 6 at North Melbourne and the track all the way to Southern Cross, where they would exclusively use platforms 13 and 15 as a double turnback. In order to achieve this, all Gippsland V/Line services would need to terminate at Flinders St. I have further plans for the area involving the freight tracks and the Craigieburn line flyover at North Melbourne, but they shall have to wait for my post on the Craigieburn line on a shoestring.

Operating Patterns and frequency

For my new Altona and WIlliamstown shuttles, I’m aiming for a 10 minute headway. Laverton to Newport via Altona currently takes 16 minutes, with the addition of a station at Newport West that would increase to 17 minutes. Add 3 minutes turnaround time and it’s a 20 minute trip, enabling the line to be run with 4 3 car sets for a 10 minute headway. Newport to Williamstown currently takes 8 minutes, with another 2 minutes to turn around it’s 10 minutes, allowing 2 3 car sets to provide a train every 10 minutes.

All this means a 5 minute headway at the single turnback and fast turnaround times – it’s tricky but not impossible. In a 3 car set, 2 minutes should hopefully be enough for the driver to walk thorough the carriages and get going again. In order to provide breaks and to expedite turnaround time, an additional driver could be based at Newport to swap with drivers on incoming trains. If 2 minutes isn’t enough time for a single driver to turn the Williamstown train around, give them 3 minutes at the Williamstown end and use 2 drivers to enable a 1 minute turnaround at Newport. Likewise, the single turnback, while able to handle a train every 5 minutes, will compound delays if they occur. However, given that these lines are pretty quiet and now isolated from the rest of the system, delays are less likely to occur and won’t affect the mainline.

Werribee would always operate as a stopping all stations service to maintain an adequate service standard for all stations. There’s little point running expresses on the line with the exception of the Altona loop, which is already bypassed under this plan. Expressing Altona saves 8 minutes, whereas Expressing Newport to Footscray only saves 2 minutes, so there’s no need for expresses on the latter section.

The key constraint on the line is the interworking with V/Line trains. If all Geelong line trains (but probably not the Warrnambool ones) stopped at Werribee, Newport, Footscray, North Melbourne and Southern Cross, there’s 3 sections of express running.  Not stopping between Werribee and Newport saves 4-5 minutes, Newport-Footscray 2 minutes and Footscray-North Melbourne 1 minute. That’s 8 minutes, and if and additional 1-2 minutes were spent getting from Werribee to Newport and 2 minute signalling headways were achieved, then the Werribee line could get 6 evenly spaced tph with space for a V/Line to Geelong in between each metropolitan train.V/Line trains could still be slowed down by Werribee trains, but segregation of the system combined with more frequent and evenly spaced trains should substantially reduce delays caused by interworking and long dwell times. For extra peak hour capacity on the Werribee line (while maintaining 4tph for Geelong) the line could operate on 10 then 6 minute headways during peak and drop to 10 minute headways off peak – I’ve included an example peak timetable, as well as a map of the operating layout below.

Cost

Cost is really important here, especially given I’m not proposing a perfect solution, but rather one on a tight budget. In giving a rough estimate of costs, I’m going to look at both best Australian practice costs as well as Eddington costs. Given that I haven’t got any figures for track duplication, I’m going to arbitrarily price it at 2/3 the cost of new double track rail. Total infrastructure costs excluding trains are shown below.

Note both Eddington and Mandurah figures are station inclusive, I’ve counted them again to be especially conservative.

The total fixed infrastructure cost (excluding signalling, which I can’t estimate reliably) in a reasonable world would be about $115m, in this current government’s world, it’s around $376m – still only about a third of that the Tarneit link is purported to cost using government figures. Note in both cases the Altona duplication takes up more than half of total infrastructure spending – if it were axed and Altona only got a 20 minute service, the works would really be on a shoestring, at only $176m using inflated Eddington figures or $50.5 using Australian best practice. These works would have a big benefit for customers and wouldn’t break the bank – sounds much better than Eddington’s expensive alternative to me.

]]> http://transporttextbook.com/?feed=rss2&p=375 33