It is expensive in recurrent costs as well as potential infrastrcuture costs. building a 10km bus lane to speed up the services might cost $20 million. Running busses at 15 minute frequency up and down the peninsula might cost $20 million per year forever.

The last two pages of the below link show that in 2006 4% of Mornington Peninsula workers worked in Melbourne and 6% of Frankston workers worked in Melbourne. I found another link that had 10% of Frankston Workers in Dandenong LGA area.
http://www.transport.vic.gov.au/DOI/DOIElect.nsf/$UNIDS+for+Web+Display/E3A72D73189B9410CA2573E9001E3F2E/$FILE/TDIA-Introduction-Chapter1.pdf

SO my point is that even if you improve the train service to Melbourne as the starting point of the alternative spending you are providing for a relatively small sector of the travel market. The real need is through Frankston north to Dandenong, or Carrum, or Keysborough/Moorabin (but well east of Moorabin station), Clayton .

and even then these work sources are much more diffuse then Melbourne CBD. the Dandenong South Industrial area bordered by South Gippsland Freeway, Eastlink, Abbots Road and Dandenong Bypass is about 6kmx6km. You’d need to run a 2-3 services from Frankston Station to service this area all less convenient than private car travel. and all likely to be accessed at Frankston by either bus or train that iwll be less convenient than private car travel as well.

When people get good services, they will use them. I’m not saying “built it and they will come” but I am saying that there’s no reason to discriminate against any geographic area based on the idea that the people are particularly hostile to public transport.

In an ideal world there’s plenty of population down there, suited to PT. And most in a single ribbon along the coast, which would make providing a corridor easy.

At the end of the day, unless public transport from Frankston to the City can be improved, you can forget about anywhere further south.

There are still some peak hour trains from Frnakston running all stations. Despite the considerable expense messers Crabb and Roper put us under to install a third track from Caulfield to Moorabbin.

All stations to Frankston, and over an hour, that’s not going to get them out of their cars from Rosebud and have them willingly parking and riding. And the 1.75 hour bus ride along the coast is even worse.

I’ve used an example in another topic (or possibly another forum) that the Pound Road/South Gippsland Highway intersection upgrade (roundabout to signals and improved adjioning freeway interchange) has $2 million in its $40 million budget to upgrade the Abbotts Road/South Gippsland Highway interchnage. The sell being that if you upgrade Pound Road, Abbotts Road is the next congested intersection that will need to be fixed so lets do it early.
Similarly the South Road extension project was about a $30 millino project – of which only $15 millino was the main contract works of extending South Road from Warrigal to Old Dandenong Road. The other money went on upgrading Old Dandenong Road downstream (sealed shoulders and intersection works) and traffic calming measures on alternative routes (White Street) to encourage people onto the extension.

These projects aren’t bundled togethor to make the projects seem more expensive. They are bundled togethor to make sure the complimentary but necessary works are also completed.

Most basic example for South Morang is building the extension without Duplicating Keon Park – Epping. The next steps are upgraded signalling across the group to allow the higher train frequencies proposed. You get funding for these ‘unsexy,’ ‘non political’ projects by linking them to the ribbon cutting project. By making it clear to the ones holding the purse strings that you can’t get the benefits of A without doing B.

I think the ’scope creep’ question when discussing adding MAJOR works to the original scope is akin to asking how long is a piece of string? eg. doing all the grade seperations along the Monash Freeway might have doubled the scope of the original project. or bundling Rooks Road and Mitcham Road into the current Springvale Road level crossing project might make a $140 million project cost $400 million. You could also (as Council wants) add grad sepping Springvale Road/Whithorse Road intersection for another $300 million… The $400 million might have a better benefit cost ratio but its harder to find $400 million than $140 million in a tight state budget.
Alternatively it might NOT have a better B/C ratio and you’re then dragging down the B/C of the really important proejct (Springvale Road) to try and tack on the other project.

re: Frankston Bypass. if anyone wants to tell me how they would spend that money on Public Transport to deliver the comparable benefits to the community in that area as the Bypass then I’ll accept the project shouldn’t be built. but as it is Mooroduc Highway (and Frankston Freeway) are saturated with people wanting to travel from south of Frankston to North of Frankston. Generally North of Frankston doesn’t mean along the Frankston train line it means to Dandenogn, Clayton, Ringwood, Glen Waverley.

SO you either:
a) cancel any more residential developmento n the peninsula to retain existing levels of traffic.
b) you forget about them and say they bought there they new it was sh!t its there problem.
c) spend a lot on PT infrastructure. say bus lanes on Moorooduc and Nepean Highways, Bus lanes on Dandenong Frankston Road and Eastlink, electrification to Baxter double the number of services Baxter to Stony Point. AND this doesn’t give the people of the peninsula the level of mobility they want/need.
d) build the bypass and accept that the Peninsula is a ‘car city’ and that the bypass will deliver benefits to roads in and around Frankston and try and use that to leverage Public Transport and liveability in and around Frankston itself.

And some of our dribbling friends talk as if there were any credible proposals for a rail extension down that way – when there aren’t.

And you don’t have to look overseas. The Peel region of WA has got the railway to Mandurah, a separate railway (potentially higher speed) under consideration to Bunbury and a freeway being built as well – and a destination population of no more than 300000 for all of these.

Kenneth Davidson and others have demonstrated that state government indebtnesses has fallen across the decades and would be 3 times higher if we had the general level that Bolte had (again, no screaming leftie!)

I tend to agree with the theory that public transport project costs are inflated in order to scare off future projects – but with a modification, which is that they’re inflated to ward off the objections of anyone who cares to add up the cost of road projects vs PT projects in the budget and ask awkward questions about roads getting three times the investment. Of course I personally understand that it’s not about roads vs PT, it’s about the philosophy behind the transport budget in general, but I have an idea that the Ministers get more grief from people who don’t know that.

It could also be due to the fact that engineers with expertise in PT are mainly retired from the DoT and work as contractors, at a vastly inflated rate. I could name several people of my acquiaintance who are in this position – and hey, after being stuffed around by VR/MMTB for ages and then left in the cold by the SRA/PTC/DoI, who can blame them? Another case of past mistakes having ramifications well past their use-by date.

Also, and you’ll forgive me for bringing one of my hobby horses out again, political decisions about DDA compliance and level crossings are a problem. I agree that major roads like Dalton Road need grade sepping, but the blanket restriction on any new level crossings (even pedestrian crossings) is to my mind irrational. Of course permanently blocking off the roads that cross the reservation will not be accepted by the locals – however vocal they may be about broken promises to have their trains back, if it is whispered around that Pindari Avenue will be cut in half, local support for the project will evaporate completely.

However – there is another side to the story. Let’s assume this scope creep didn’t happen. To take a perfectly fictional example, let’s assume there was a project to grade separate a level crossing. Long term plans called for three tracks through the area, so space was left for triplication if and when the project came to fruition. However, there was no immediate need for triplication as the current two tracks were handling the stopping and express services quite well. So no extra money was spend laying the third track. The project came in early and under budget, and everyone was happy.

Or to take another example. A freeway was built along a creek course, which happened to go near a railway line at a few places. Obviously where it went past a major road a bridge would be needed. There was an option to extend the bridge further and grade separate the level crossing as part of the freeway bridge project – which would have had the additional benefit of removing a tram square, with its 24×7 manned signal box and various electrical complications. This option was not taken up, the freeway project stayed as a simple freeway project, the shops on the other side of the level crossing didn’t have to exchange their view of the street for a view of a bridge pylon, and the train passengers could happily watch freeway traffic flash by them as they crossed the tram square at 15km/h.

Maybe there’s more to it than we thought? There is undoubtedly an economy of scale to be achieved by combining projects. And there is quite probably some benefit to be gained in public perception by combining a necessary but unsexy project (eg grade separating a rail junction) with something that could be done at any time but costs money (eg boosting bus frequencies and coordinating the timetable with the train).

The problem comes when the project gets so big that it dominates the entire sector. The South Morang project (or Clifton Hill Group Modernisation Project) is no doubt going to be the major effort that Lynne Kosky draws public attention to in order to show that she’s doing the right thing. Look at me, I’m spending half a billion dollars making this group run the way it should. That’s great. There’s no question that it should be done. But it’s the smallest of the four groups, and they all need major upgrades – to say nothing of the tram system, bus services, V/Line and the inner city.

In a sense, all government spending is robbing Peter to pay Paul to a limited extent. Scope creep in transport projects is just an extreme example of it.

In an environment where transport is given a high priority in government thinking, I would have no problem at all with a Clifton Hill group upgrade project costing $500m+, because I could be sure the rest of the system would get its turn. At the moment, I’m not really sure where transport does sit in the priority list. I’m certain it is higher today than it was five years ago. The purchase of 38 Xtraps when a Federal tax law change brought a state budget windfall proves that. But I’m not sure it’s quite where it should be – the funding of the Frankston Bypass (against local opposition) proves that.

BTW – thanks Daniel for posting. And congrats for getting a straight answer out of the DoT when nobody else could.

I thought this website was for serious discussion about theories and fact, not for speculation or make believe.

(key word left off original post bolded…. can a mod delete my last post?)