Theory in action: Evaluating a proposal for a better rail service in the Mornington Peninsula
Sign at Frankston Flinders Rd
Those who have not recently visited my blog may not have seen the photo of the junction points at Baxter, that appear to have been replaced sometime after 1975 (and before 1981, when the line closed).
Of course, by 1975 it would have been clear to the powers that be that the line would close. It therefore seems remarkable that the points were swapped. I guess the heavy freighters running up from Long Island needed to charge Langwarrin Bank on heavier rail. However, straight-railing the section, and closing the branch, may not have been politically feasible at that point.
The Mornington Rail Preservation Society have an excellent tourist railway arrangement running between Moorooduc Hwy, Moorooduc, and Yuilles Rd, Mornington, one that I have often stated captures the feeling of the 1970s on the VR branchline network: The K Class with wooden cars (substituted by a T class at the last minute). The railmotors. The clickety clack of the short rails. The piling out from carriages onto unmade platforms.
The society have as their stated goal to restore back to Baxter when the time is right. When I visited this morning, the Frankston Flinders Rd level crossing stretch was in poor condition, with maturing pine trees growing between the rails. This is probably no worse than the Musk-Bullarto section of the Daylesford line, which also had mature trees removed from track before it was restored. In addition, while we know the junction consists of a solid turnout, the Baxter Station area is now very basic and would require a massive amount of work to reinstate a yard for a tourist railway. The obvious place to build the yard is on the opposite side of the Stony Point line from the branch but I doubt the freight operators would want a second (facing) turnout, and the worry of tourist trains crossing the main.
Contributors in other places have often suggested, I would say naively, that the Mornington Line be reopened for general passenger traffic.
The main problems with this have been that Mornington to Frankston (the first logical destination of a Mornington commuter) route by rail is very very indirect compared with road.
I will explain the topography briefly.
Because the twin peaks, so to speak, of Mount Eliza and Mount Martha effectively block a coast railway from south of Frankston to around Dromana, no railway was built south along the shoreline of Port Phillip Bay. While a railway did eventually reach Mornington, the approach to the Mornington Peninsula was to take the line south from Frankston but swing sharply to the East, to gain height more slowly to reach the crest at Langwarrin.
From there, the height was immediately lost as the line descends to Baxter. From Baxter, the topography is either flat or gently undulating until almost Mornington, where the current train terminus at Yuilles Rd is sited on a sizeable grade down into Mornington township on the coast.
This diversion via Baxter was less troubling for the ultimate destinations on Westernport Bay such as Hastings and Crib Point (and previously Balnarring and Red Hill South) the diversion was probably fatal to the Mornington service. In fact I would suggest it was probably the single factor in the line’s failure, as the area had already become urbanised when the line closed, was no less an origin of commuters than say Melton, and was ceteris parebus (all other things being equal) an excellent candidate destination for electrification.
However, as I have argued on my own blog in the discussion of loops (for example, my rant on the failure of the City Loop) diversions are usually most wasteful for the customer of the place at the end of the diversion, but not necessarily for those in the middle. Using the City Loop as an example, a customer going from Richmond to Flinders St will find the diversion via Melbourne Central completely wasteful (and the leg from Melbourne Central to Flagstaff is actually going at a 90 degree angle to where the customer actually wants to go).
And in this case, while the Mornington commuter will find the journey via Baxter completely wasteful, this waste diminishes as you head along the line through Moorooduc to Baxter itself. From Moorooduc for example, while Baxter is definitely the ‘wrong way’ to Frankston, the amount of diversion is much lower (I will look at this below).
What are the transport needs of the Mornington Peninsula?
My gut feel is that if there was no rail service down there already, you wouldn’t build one. But working on the premise that equity demands if one area has a good rail service, another area with the same attributes (population, distance, density and overall demand) should also have one, you would keep the Stony Point line. Freight justifies most the line, as far as nearly Bittern, and the balance is short enough to wear the expense.
The Eastern Peninsula (the Westernport Bay side) is therefore served, with two major towns of Hastings and Crib Point served, and only two towns (Flinders and Balnarring) missing out (Balnarring was once served by an infrequent branch line from Bittern).
The Western Peninsula (the Port Phillip Bay side) completely misses out, now that Mornington has no service.
Road transport provides for all the transport needs of the western side.
Compared with a hypothetical rail service, the bus service to the end of the Peninsula at Portsea is poor. Assuming a train followed the times of an average, pre-RFR train service on this hypothetical line, over a distance of 55km the train should be able to cover the distance in 60 minutes, including 8 stops (using Donnybrook to Seymour as the comparator).
The bus service, with typical transit times of 100 minutes from Young St to Hotham St net of many, many possible stops, is very poor in comparison. Adding a typical 60 minute train transit from Frankston to Melbourne results in a total transit time of at least 160 minutes, or 2 hours 40 minutes, which is very poor for a 100 km journey.
Adding the poor frequency, the need to change at Frankston, and the use of an urban rather than intercity bus, makes travelling the Peninsula to Melbourne by public transport is a poor prospect compared to say Ballarat or even Korumburra.
The Eastern side is somewhat better. Crib Point to Melbourne is 70 km, and about 90-100 minutes by rail, including a change at Frankston. The use of rail, rather than a road alternative, clearly improves the usefulness of public transport to the interurban customer. Even, as in this case, where the rail transport offered is somewhat unattractive (and could be significantly improved).
But rail will always be an over-the-top option for many areas, including the Mornington Peninsula. The fact that a legacy rail service exists to serve the eastern side will benefit that side and not require a major positive evaluation to keep this service going. The lack of a legacy rail service to the western side, even with the Mornington line down, will probably prevent rail ever being considered for this side of the Peninsula.
The recent opening of the Eastlink freeway to Frankston has reduced road travel times to the entrance to the Mornington Peninsula, but (as freeways often do) increased political and local pressure to build the Frankston Bypass to reach the existing Mornington Peninsula Freeway which finished between Safety Beach and Moorooduc. Completion of this section would provide continuous freeway from Melbourne to Rosebud.
The excellent service provided by these roads to motorists is better on the Western side than the Eastern side. The Western Port Highway, which serves the Eastern side, leaves the freeway at Lyndhurst, and steadily deteriorates as it heads south. First the proliferation of round abouts which slow the motorist down and lead to jams; then the road becomes single carriageway around Langwarrin; finally the curvature increases as you reach Hastings and have to weave in and around the townships down there.
One interesting consideration is that the Mornington Peninsula Freeway, which will be the major bearer of longer distance traffic from the southern part of the Peninsula towards Melbourne, suffers from the same topographical problems that beset the Peninsula’s railways. While the Nepean Hwy does its best to ascend Mt Martha and skirt the ridge of Mt Eliza, this road will now become only be a secondary road.
To avoid these hills, the future Mornington Peninsula Freeway (Frankston Bypass) is projected to continue up the Safety Beach “saddle” and along the flat section towards Moorooduc, then bypass Moorooduc Village to the east, climb towards Langwarrin next to the Stony Point line and descend slowly down to the connection with the Eastlink/Frankston Freeway at Carrum Downs.
Frankston Bypass
By deviating the freeway so far east (even further east than the current Moorooduc Hwy) we are presented with an interesting situation – that a road corridor designed to serve the western Peninsula intersects with a rail corridor that really only serves the eastern Peninsula. The point of intersection will be an overpass over the Mornington Railway at East Moorooduc.
This project would have obvious spin-off benefits to the Mornington tourist railway. For one, the current traffic level on the Moorooduc Highway would fall considerably, improving the chances of reopening the level crossing at this location. Secondly, the road contractors would be required as a matter of law to reinstate the railway after digging it up at the overpass site. And the practicalities of deliberately reinstating rotten sleepers and mature trees into the trackbed would suggest that MRPS might be given the free gift of a restored section of track, at least as long as that disturbed by the overpass contractor.
And of course, improved road access to the Peninsula would boost the number of tourists able to ride their railway.
But what if there was ’something more?’ Something that could be used not just by tourists.
Park and Ride
Many public transport theorists shy away from the idea of Park and Ride for good reason: it is only ever a partial solution at best, and wastes other opportunities for public transport development.
Land near stations is, or should be, valuable for transit-oriented development and to give it away free to commuters is wasteful. Park and Ride undermines potentially viable bus services, at their most viable point. It supports peak flows only, which for most workers are only 2 trips a day, versus a more flexible public transport system which can support more trips per day than 2. Motor vehicle movements near stations create hazard and delay for pedestrians and bus users.
Park and Ride also requires the customer to own a car, and therefore loads into their budget the substantial fixed costs of owning a car, and therefore encourage the customer to minimise the average total cost by driving the car, rather than using public transport where prices for the customer are usually set as a proportion of average, rather than marginal, costs.
But Park and Ride does have some natural territory. Particularly in the urban/rural fringe where bus services of a suitable standard for turn-up-and-go usage will never be provided. Many people live in what is called ‘acreage’, sometimes as a lifestyle choice (having horses, for example, or just liking the country feeling) and sometimes out of economic necessity, as people move to fringe villages like Tynong North or Coldstream that have never had adequate public transport.
Many of these people continue to work in the urban area, and like all commuters, would welcome a choice of options and to not have to face unnecessarily high fuel and parking costs.
While getting a critical mass of such people for a rail service out of such low density population will be a challenge, one saving grace is that the net would be cast fairly wide, and the catchment could be as much as 10-15 km or more from the railhead.
What park and ride currently takes place?
The size and heavy usage of the Frankston station carpark is a pointer to the need for better public transport serving the Peninsula as a whole. With people on the western Peninsula effectively unserved, and people on the eastern side poorly served (but at least served) by an infrequent railcar shuttle, it is little wonder many drive to Frankston.
The current service does not support these people. While a sixty-minute trip, stopping at most stations (or in some cases, all stations, even in peak times) is probably adequate for someone who lives in Frankston and was until recently competitive with the peak road times to the CBD, for someone from further south, the arrangement is unsatisfactory. The access via local roads is also unsatisfactory, with each twist and turn, and multiple sets of traffic lights a disadvantage versus the “keep going” option with driving.
What are the factors in good Park and Ride design?
Existing Park and Ride proposals and actions have generally been poorly considered, and often to justify political rather than transport ends. The first of these is to reuse existing stations such as Garfield or Ballan, in the centre of the respective townships, one senses to justify the station rather than provide genuine Park and Ride options.
The Park and Ride customer, like all customers, has a measure of true-end-to-end journey time. This journey time includes a wait time, transit times on all modes, connection time, and average lateness or delay. The Park and Ride customer is generally a commuter (with 2 journeys a day, to and from work) and would use their car for other journeys, usually in their area.
The fact that they are travelling only to and from work somewhat limits their flexibility of when to travel, but the imposition of standard working hours in most industries then limits their flexibility of when they can start and finish. Which makes the job easier for PT providers, as they therefore do not need to provide a turn-up-and-go service, but provide a timetabled service, which, if close enough to the times for standard working hours, the customer needs to fit their travel timings around.
But common to the Park and Ride journey and the full journey by car is the first section of the journey, by car, usually via a local road and then a freeway, to the point of exit from the Freeway to the Park and Ride. Because at this point the customer has two choices: to diverge to the Park and Ride, or keeping going on the freeway. Every minute spent between the freeway exit and the Park and Ride is a minute of travel where the customer could have ‘kept going’ along the freeway and are that much closer to their destination.
This provides one of the first key lessons of Park and Ride: that building the stations right at freeway overpasses (usually cheap, degraded pieces of land) is the best option, and every stop sign, traffic light or queue that the motorist faces to get from that freeway exit to the train or bus is a nail in the coffin of the Park and Ride option.
There are several sites I have identified around Melbourne where cheap, degraded land associated with freeway overpasses and the acreage belt coincide with the rail network. All would be suitable for Park and Ride and in a couple of cases, this is already occurring. East Pakenham, at the literal end of the wire would be one such place, pulling in the acreage dwellers of Tynong North and Nar Nar Goon North, who might be better able to access the network at this point than at Tynong or Nar Nar Goon stations.
Another would be the former General Motors station site, where the South Gippsland Freeway crosses. This would require new on and off ramps but the land below would be quite suitable for a large carpark and a station on the Pakenham line, which could pull those people in from the very low density suburbs around Hampton Park.
The new Mornington Peninsula Freeway, as noted in the map above, crosses the line at East Moorooduc and again at Langwarrin. The next point of intersection is Kananook, which is from the rail network’s perspective an excellent site for Park and Ride, but from the road perspective a poor one: the freeway easement is very tight at this point. The land around Kananook would also have real commercial value and disturbance to neighbours would be high.
The Langwarrin site has the advantage of being on an existing rail service albeit non-electrified. However, this site, too, will be fairly tight as the freeway descends into a cutting or tunnel under the Pines Reserve and Golf Course. It is also a urbanised area with the same problems with neighbours as Kananook.
Which leaves the East Moorooduc site, which has the disadvantage of requiring maybe 2 kilometres of rail track restoration, and the provision of an additional service not covered by the Stony Point line. The site is otherwise a greenfields site, but which will be degraded by the construction of the overpass, with few neighbours and few other urban land uses.
Viability of a Park and Ride service
As was stated above, the commuter from the southern Peninsula who is bound for inner Melbourne, and wishes to avoid the high petrol and parking costs of travel to inner Melbourne, is the target for this service. There will be no walk-up traffic, and any bus service to this site would need to be additional to the coastal urban service which currently runs. It is possible a few bus journeys from Rosebud and beyond could be scheduled to the Park and Ride to connect with the service, and save considerable time for genuine commuters without cars to make the entire journey.
The time for the commuter is a ‘given’ time from their southern Peninsula origin point to the exit of the Mornington Peninsula Freeway at East Moorooduc, at which point the clock starts ticking as to whether they should keep going, say to the Frankston Railway carpark, or complete their journey by car.
I timed it yesterday, Sunday, in average off-peak traffic conditions, and it is exactly ten minutes from the Frankston-Flinders Rd level crossing on the Mornington line to Frankston Station at Young St. In peak times it would be considerably worse. The new road will not help reduce journey times into Frankston Station, as the road goes north east to Langwarrin then north west to Carrum Downs.
Rail, on the other hand, takes currently eleven minutes from Baxter, a time which I’m sure could be reduced by one minute simply by improving the entrance arrangements to Frankston. Assuming the new line segment only adds one minute to the journey, we have a time which is competitive with road over the same distance.
Such a service would of course cost money, both recurrent and capital, to get it going.
What other budgets might be offset against this cost?
First and foremost, the provision of additional parking at Frankston Station. A few decks of carpark might cost $10 million; a cheap restoration of the 2km from Baxter to East Moorooduc might be similar. A self-propelled railcar would need no run-around. Beyond that point it is all recurrent expenditure.
Operating the rail service could be expensive, but a few substitutions from other possible scenarios would be instructive. For example, a frequently mooted possibility is to increase the frequency of Stony Point services. With no passing capacity south of Frankston (except for the train shunting onto the Long Island Branch) you would need to reinstate one of the old passing sidings, for example, Somerville or Hastings. Crib Point has intact sidings, but is too far south to be useful as a loop.
Again, this project would give you the opportunity to operate a second service south of Frankston, with movements onto and off the short branch taking place while the Stony Point service is south of Baxter (which is most of the time). Safeworking requirements would be minimal.
The service, and the Stony Point one, would become the interurban express service that I have mooted in other places. Frankston commuters would be offered a seat on this train with few stops before the city – at a premium. Leawarra and Baxter commuters would find this a significant advantage as well.
A six-car Velocity or Sprinter set, with say half the seats full by Frankston, and the balance taken by Frankston commuters, should be able to reach the CBD within 60 minutes from Moorooduc East. This includes 11 minutes from Moorooduc East to Frankston, a one-minute stop, then 48 minutes (see 1967 timetable) from Frankston to Flinders Street. This train could be a ‘balancing run’ against a Geelong service that would otherwise have to find a home, such as the one that runs to Caulfield sidings each morning.
End-to-end journey times for the commuter from Dromana to Young and Jacksons (we can’t really know which CBD destination the commuter is going to) should be approximately 75 minutes: 10 minutes to the Moorooduc East park and ride, 5 minutes to park the car and board the train, 60 minutes transit time to Flinders Street, and 5 minutes to exit the station complex. This compares with end-to-end driving time of 75 minutes in a future peak driving scenario (as follows: maps.google.com quote of 1:15 but factoring peak delays of 10 minutes and parking at end of journey, minus saving from Frankston bypass to be built of 10 minutes).
Cost savings would be more substantial – a Zone 1 and 2 daily at $10.10 versus approximately $5 return on Eastlink, approximately $5 return on Citylink, EITHER 8 litres of petrol for a modestly efficient car for the return journey ($24) which is the lower bound with the fixed costs worn by the driver, OR a fully-costed kilometre rate for petrol, wear and tear and depreciation of 70 cents a kilometer, or a massive $117 dollars per day. Even the lower bound (variable cost only) has the driver paying $34 a day plus parking (which using the best early bird rate is still about $12 a day).
In conclusion, I have tried to argue the case for a piece of public transport infrastructure that probably won’t be built. While I think on its own you could argue for it, as part of a package of improvements it would be a long…way down the list of priorities.
Comments?
The current railcar service to Stony Point is really a joke – one train every two hours until 6pm is just a welfare service, which is reflected in the stand of passengers.
I wouldn’t consider Crib Point to be a ‘major’ town – Somerville is the second largest after Hastings. Doubt that the government would commit to a major upgrade of this corridor any time soon, given how low it is along the priorities list.
I saw PN’s train from Long Island this afternoon with two locos and a good few steel wagons, so at least there is some reasoning for the line to stay open.
As to your latter proposal, IMO encouraging long distance commuting is poor planning, and it would rely significantly on induced demand to get patronage.
Thanks Somebody
A better idea, if anyone cared, would be to build the capacity of Frankston as a decentralised CBD. Then a good regional bus network would service it as a hub in its own right, rather than a park and ride to somewhere else.
The Mornington corridor can’t really be saved – if MRPS get the full thing running as an excursion trip from Frankston I would be really pleased – but I have set out why, in this post, it closed, basically it goes nowhere anyone would want to go. I just thought this was an interesting idea, what would happen if we considered the western Peninsula traffic stream at its closest point to the rail network.
Apart from the planning idea, I will give you some of the philosophical points against it.
1. WA built a new railway to Mandurah, to service settlement very similar to that south of Frankston. It costs a lot of money, but if it is worth doing, it needs to be done to that standard, minimum, to be competitive with road. 72kms in 48 minutes, no less. Every 12 minutes. You can’t just compete with the car, you have to thrash it, hands down, to get on the radar.
2. You could waste as much in a year on these schemes as the interest payment on a line such as the Mandurah one. Assuming you borrowed $1b and built a line from Frankston, along the freeway alignment to Safety Beach, Dromana and Rosebud, you would still be paying $80m a year in interest but would be providing a service that people might actually use. I’m assuming the Frankston line is operated better, too.
3. I tried to fudge the idea of building a Moorooduc East station instead of a station at Langwarrin. If the freeway does get built and a station were built at Langwarrin, it could take buses from a wide surrounding area (Langwarrin, Karingal, the area in question and from further south) and the only cost would be station, a bit of wire from Frankston, and the cost of running a decent service, for example, significant expressing the length of the Frankston line.
4. My idea is just too far down the list to be realistic. My 273 point plan (that Ninthnotch challenged me to write) has about 50 very serious proposals on them, many in the public domain. It would cost billions and billions to do them all, and you wouldn’t even start to think about this sort of thing.
5. I don’t figure any settlement south of Hastings on the eastern side as a genuine source of commuters; for many decades. Crib Point is a hole (I’m sorry to say) and seems to have a serious welfare/delinquent youth problem. Stony Point is just a ferry pier and Bittern is not a serious settlement. If you electrified to Hastings, in the long term, and closed the rest, I won’t shed too many tears. Quaint yes, wonderful to ride a steam train excursion to, probably, not a serious long term proposition for passenger rail.
Fascinating as always Riccardo! I was down that way last night (visiting my girlfriend’s parents) and as I drove over the old line at Moorooduc highway I thought hmm, that would be interesting to restore… But as you point out, the alignment is not much good as is – and to get a straighter one we’re talking substantial amounts of money. As such, it’s certainly quite a way down the list of improvements.
I’d write a more detailed response now, but have a 2500 word essay due tomorrow so should keep things somewhat brief(strangely, the essay is on assessing MTP, MOTC and Eddington for rail so I should be more motivated – but I digress).
Eastlink certainly has cut travel times substantially going into Eastern Melbourne (and I suspect the city as well), so rail is going to have to work very hard to be competitive. Moreover, the socioeconomic dymanics of the Mornington Peninsula (which I don’t quite understand admittedly) seem to see PT confined to the ‘loser’ category. Part of this is no doubt due to the parlous state of rail and bus services in the area making the car the only real option for those that own one – but it’s an attitude that will take some effort to change I feel. There’s probably a lot less latent goodwill for new rail services here than in inner and middle band Melbourne due to the loser stigma.
Making Frankston into a decent regional hub has a lot of merit – but again it’s the socioeconomic (rather than transport planning) issues which make it tricky. I wonder how easy it will be to get Mt. Eliza people to work in Frankston en masse for example.
Somebody – agree that the Stony point is nothing more than a welfare service with the frequencies it provides. Upgrading frequencies is sensible if the line is to survive long term, but I probably agree with Riccardo that the line doesn’t really do much good beyond Hastings – ultimately I’d prefer a decent rail service to Hastings and nothing beyond than the lowest common denominator service that operates now.
I remember reading on Railpage around the end of 2007 that the expansion of the Port of Hastings was going to necessitate extra freight trains. Wonder if that could help justify any upgrading of the line south of Franga?
Although I remember that via Franga was only going to be an interim solution until a line to Dandenong would be built – would be interesting to see how you’d get SG to Hastings.
Agree on Frankston being developed further. As to people from Mt Eliza working in Frankston – why not, it’s only 10 mins away?
The socio-economic status of the towns on the eastern side of the Peninsula is quite different to the other side. I guess that ensures a steady flow of captive users for that silly rail service (agree on south of Hastings being worthless).
The Frankston and Peninsula Mass Transport system.
The changes to improve the usability of the peninsula mass transport system.
• The creation of 6 Mass transport interchange hubs for the peninsula. These will be located at Frankston, Somerville, Hastings, Mornington, Rosebud and Sorrento Pier
• The introduction of 3 new limited stop bus services operating to Mornington Rosebud and Sorrento Pier. The Peninsula Mass transport backbone.
• The Mornington limited stop service will operate express from Frankston to Mount Eliza then all stops to Mornington.
• The Rosebud limited stop service will operate express from Frankston to Mornington then all stops to Rosebud transport terminal via mount Martha and safety beach.
• The Sorrento Pier express service will operate express from Frankston with a stop at Monash Frankston campus then express to rosebud then all stops to Sorrento Pier. Operates via Frankston – Rosebud Expressway.
• At all of the 6 new transport terminals short distance feeder routes will operate to connect with the high frequency limited stop buses to Frankston. These new feeder services will replace the current housing area routes.
• New Cross Peninsula bus services linking up the new transport terminals around the peninsula.
• New Mornington to Somerville bus service.
• New Mornington to Hastings bus service with extension to port complex at peak times.
• New Rosebud to Hastings bus service with extension to port complex at peak times.
• New Rosebud to Flinders bus service.
• New Hastings to Cranbourne bus service
• New Hastings to Dandenong bus service
• New Somervile to Dandenong bus service.
• New Limited stop Smart bus services all day from Frankston to Ringwood aimed to cut 20 mins off the total end to end trip. Upgraded Peak hour freq every 5 mins all stops and every 10 mins off peak all stops. Plus every 10 mins peak for limted stop and every 15 mins off peak limited stops. Last limited stop bus at 9pm each way.
• Upgraded double track railway from Frankston to Hastings with an every 7 min peak DMU service to and from Frankston. Every 15 mins off peak.
• Stony Point DMU to be upgraded to every 30 mins from Hastings to Stony Point.
• Upgraded Cross Bay ferry from Stony Point to Cowes now operates 7 days a week every 30 mins as a train link ferry service. Additional Boat link bus connections on Phillip Island and to San Remo. This service will operate from 4am to 11pm Monday to Saturday and 6am to 11pm Sundays.
• New higher standard feeder bus frequency for all Frankston and peninsula bus services. The new standard is Weekdays: 4am to 10am every 15 mins, 10am to 3pm every 30 mins, 3pm to 8pm every 15 mins, 8pm to 11pm every 30 mins. Weekends: every 30 mins from 5am to 11pm. To give network coverage to within 500 meters of all homes, shops and offices on the peninsula.
• New Limited stop (Mornington Rosebud and Sorrento Pier) bus service freq
Weekdays: 3.30am to 5am every 15 mins, 5am to 10am every 5 mins 10am to 3pm every 15 mins, 3pm to 8pm every 5 mins, 8pm to 1am every 15 mins.
Weekends: 4.30am to 1am every 15 mins.
• New Cross Peninsula Bus service freq. (Mornington to Hastings etc) Weekdays: 4am to 10am every 10 mins, 10am to 3pm every 15 mins, 3pm to 8pm every 10 mins, 8pm to 12am every 15 mins. Weekends: 5am to 12am every 15 mins.
• Metro conversion of Melbourne to Frankston Railway. New peak freq every 2 mins off peak every 5 mins late night every 10 mins. Operation hours 4am to 1am 7 days a week. Design capacity to cater for upto 40000 people per hour per direction. Friday and Saturday nights service will operate 24 hours. (Every 15 mins. 1am to 4am)
• New Frankston to Geelong Cross bay Boat service. Every 15 mins at peak every 30 mins off peak and weekends.
• Upgraded Sorrento to Queenscliff ferry service to every 15 mins at peak and every 30 mins off peak and weekends. Plus overnight service every 60 mins. (12am to 5am)
• New 7 days a week night bus service from CBD Melbourne to Sorrento via Frankston and Mornington and rosebud. Every 30 mins from 11pm to 5am. Connections at Frankston for Hastings and Sorrento area. Friday and Saturday additional night bus services will operate to and from Frankston.
• New Airport direct service. Starting at Sorrento and operating via Rosebud and Mornington then limited stop to Frankston then express to melb airport via (eastlink expressway and city link expressway to Melbourne airport.) Operates 24 hours every 15 mins from 4am to 11pm and every 30 mins between 11pm and 4am 7 days a week. Aimed at domestic and international air travellers from Frankston and the peninsula.
• All existing bus and rail services covered by this upgrade will be replaced by these new greatly enhanced mass transport services. All services will be integrated into the Melbourne metro fare system.
Thanks to all
Phin, I’d love to see a cultural analysis of the MP (as part of a broader cultural analysis?)
I think getting Frankston to be a serious option for a hub is no different from in Sydney – its the cultural differences between Sydney and Melbourne that are the issue here.
No-one would think twice if a second tier finance company, for example, Aussie Home Loans or Virgin Credit Cards, said it was going to build its HQ at Chatswood or Parramatta. That the CEO chose to live in the local area would be up to him/her and there would be no intrinsic reason why not. A whole host of management down from there would also face the same decision.
Melbourne has a long way to go on this front but again it is just path-dependency and inertia to be overcome.
Mt Eliza has an ‘old money’ reputation but eventually old money dies off or moves on. Look at Ansett – gone with the wind, so to speak.
Even David and James Reyne don’t live there IIRC.
At least Frankston has a well-off hinterland of its own (a place for social climbers to climb to), if we remodel Footscray finding such a place will be harder!
Re Hastings – we will truly find out if the claims that dual gauge can’t handle more than 80km/h safely are valid. The Freights will presumably all be SG (and therefore using the inner rail) but the passenger trains, which currently do up to 95 km/h, would continue to use the broad gauge. Or would you have a SG passenger train? And would this standardisation lead to the closure of the section south of Hastings?
Great post! Just for completeness I suppose I should bring up Grenda’s experiment – a trial P&R freeway express coach from Rosebud to Melbourne CBD.
Details here: http://www.busaustralia.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=34856
I can claim to have seen it on its first day of operation (last Monday) at Southern Cross; arriving at 8:27am it does the trip just a shade under 2 hrs.
I waited there at 5:30pm that day but no show – but it is a pre-booked service, with fares of $15 one-way or $25 return.
Service compared to 788+train? Dearer, less flexible (1 trip each way) but maybe 20 min faster. The seat guarantee is of limited value; in the morning you can get a seat at Frankston Station and in the evening (if leaving from Southern Cross, but not Melbourne Central or Parliament) you’ll also get a seat.
Students of transport history and marketing will also notice the ‘cream-skimming’ promotion. Refer to photo of advertisement at Frankston Station (not served by this service) by Craig Halsall: http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d113/tram3003/portsea_cbd_service.jpg
I haven’t been back since, so am not sure how the service is running; though my back of the envelope calculations shows it needs about 24 passengers to be viable.
As a trial, we could wait for the MRPS to get to Baxter. Then contract them to provide two return diesel-hauled services in the morning peak, and two in the afternoon peak, to Southern Cross. They’d provide the locos, maybe the crews, and if neccesary the rollingstock (although the MTH’s are sitting there unused…)
This could be an arrangement for maybe three months, to see how it goes.
Heck, have the service start at Moorooduc for the first month, then from Mornington East for the second and third months…
Uh, gunzel dreaming StS. Not a hope. Sorry.
Ok, I’ll rephrase it.
Wait for them to get to Baxter, then run V/Line stock on the line, and purchase the paths neccesary. The biggest issue would be mixing the Baxter-Moorooduc train staff and ticket with the Frankston-Stony Point ATC panel.
Thanks PP – I didn’t know about this as I don’t follow the bus boards.
My rail service would be considerably quicker although I am only factoring a journey from Dromana in the general vicinity of the Freeway entrance, not the depths of Rosebud, and the Moorooduc bypass section hasn’t been built yet. That might cut off 15 minutes from the road journey.
The Stony Point timetable is a bit ordinary too. I feel the early morning service (06:17?) is too early but the next one doesn’t get to Melbourne before 9am. And the afternoon is bad too.
The trouble with combining tourist and main line railways is to do with the legislation. Tourist railways don’t have to do as much in order to get accreditation (although they are speed limited). In order to get the tourist line up to main line standards it would actually be cheaper just to run a bulldozer through the work of those volunteers and lay concrete sleepers. I remember looking at this in the context of South Gippy.
And once it’s a main line, the rollingstock and drivers would have to be accredited to main line standards in order to run. Basically MTR would have to become Steamrail – which would mean a paid admin person to deal with all the paperwork.
Effectively, a passenger service on the line would mean the end of the tourist service.
fine – version three of the plan:
Put Myki stands on Platform 3 at Baxter, and hire the aformentioned services, the same way that trains can be hired on the Puffing Billy line. The passengers pay for Myki, and the government pays the true cost of running the trains, to the MRPS.
Mjja – just thinking – you could do the Maldon “cheat”
Have MRPS restore to the boundary, and then put a baulk across it to separate from the Victrack line. Then fudge that the line from there to Baxter is not a Victrack line, but ‘leased’ for $1, on operating days, but part of MRPS.
ISTR a PN or similar train has entered the Castlemaine Moolort section after VGR started running into Maldon station. It is just that when they do, VGR can’t run on the same section.
Agree though, it is silly legislation.
^ That’s not me (the actual Somebody) who made that above comment.
Time to do some troll/dribbler removal.
Note for tateluby@yahoo.com.
This is NOT Railpage.
Thank you for writing valuable post regarding the topic. I
Another spammer… can someone who knows wordpress please nuke them.
Ricc, I know this is an old article, but after reading through it again I realise what needs to be thrown into the mix – standard gauge access to the Port of Hastings.
My Dad, who operates a lubricants company and therefore knows where all the heavy industries are, says that the transport needs have shifted again. They moved from West Melbourne to Dandenong South a few decades ago; then they moved to the Hallam area; now they’re all going out to Pakenham.
His idea is that we need a standard gauge line to come over from Somerton across country to Epping (potentially another big transport hub), go around Hurstbridge and Lilydale and the rest of suburbia, hit Pakenham, go round Cranbourne and then basically head down the Westernport to Hastings. I’ve told him the gradients are going to kill it, but I have to agree with him that a) something needs to be done about Hastings because Melbourne won’t handle all the port traffic we’re going to need, and b) there is no way the suburban rail lines are going to handle freight, it’s difficult enough with the small amount of freight they have today.
I’d be interested to know your thoughts.
MJJA, interesting idea. The gradients are horrible around those sections, and they only get worse the further east you go. You are also cutting across the creek valleys, which makes it worse.
The best alignment is probably along EastLink, quad Lilydale to run up through North Croydon to Bend of Islands, and then wind your way through Plenty and north around the growth area.
Alternatively, go the other way: follow the Peninsula freeway/Melbourne Rd. to Portsea, punch a tunnel to Point Lonsdale, and take Hastings/Pakenham/Dandenong/Ringwood traffic through Geelong.
Russ, was thinking the same. The Eastlink corridor is OK as far as Ringwood, but unless you dig another tunnel, that’s as far as you get.
And that is the ‘cheat’ the road network uses. Up the Dandenong Creek Valley to Ringwood, then tunnel through to the Koonung Creek which carves a path towards the Yarra at Bulleen. I can see another tunnel being popular with the population or treasury
.
Interestingly apart from a few cuttings that had to be dug between Caulfield and Richmond, the Dandenong line itself takes the straightest, flattest route available from Melbourne to Dandenong (and from there towards Cranbourne and Tooradin on the water).
We’ve discussed proposals to quad the Dandenong line but without significant grade sepping you won’t get the speeds and frequency of service required. Which leads me to other conclusions:
1. The whole rural state network should have been standardised when the ALP promised it. I’m assuming that it would have been Pakenham to Bairnsdale because Sale-Bairnsdale line was effectively restored, the line from Pakenham to Traralgon has been significantly rebuilt and both of those jobs could have been done to Standard Gauge. With that done, you might have only needed a single track SG line between Dandy and Pakenham as Vline could be timetabled around this limitation. Freight is infrequent and the Kilmore East Apex can reach that location on the SG, as can the logs to Geelong and paper. I’m assuming Koala was already gone and the Lyndhurst cement not far from it.
You would then have had a fairly seamless operation for those interstate and local traffics on the SG.
2. Rebuilding the Dandenong corridor is not impossible, but would be expensive, and would imply a new approach to transport and urban planning in that area. I would suggest very intensive land use, demolition of the remaining strip shop sections that encroach on the corridor (eg Oakleigh and Hughesdale, Clayton) and full sepping the corridor given it would be running a train every minute each direction in peak. Would really need Dandenong to be next Parramatta and Pakenham the next Penrith to make it worthwhile.
It would be best to try and minimise removal of shops (and try and replace any removed shops with new shops over the newly lower railway) as stations as isolated islands in a sea of car infrastructure is not good for the safety, amenity and atmosphere of stations.
Living in the area and using either Carnegie or Murrumbeena station each day, I’ve often wondered about a quad-tracking and grade separation project between Caulfield and say Westall yard. This together with flyovers at Caulfield would allow all-stops trains to run in the centre tracks with expresses, V/lines and freights on the outer tracks.
With the exception of the tight squeeze at Hughesdale, it seems there is plenty of room for quad track and dual island stations in a trench. The affected stations are each surrounded by plenty of carparking and open space, the open corridor at Murrumbeena is 50m wide for example, and closer to 90m if the terraced shops alongside platform two were removed (which would be a shame in my opinion, despite being run down I think they have a lot of historic value).
Such grade separations are expensive, as Springvale Rd will attest. However with an integrated approach there is a lot of ‘symbiotic’ value to be had in a project. The grade separation itself would improve road congestion throughout that part of the city by removing the barrier arms. Pedestrian access would be improved, as these town centres are likewise severed in two in terms of pedestrian access (all too often I experience the frustration of not being able to reach the platform because the train I am rushing to catch has triggered the crossing gates closed in front of me). The quad tracking would improve the capacity and reliability of the line significantly, particularly for express and regional services. Lowering the track would necessitate new efficiently designed stations, and would allow modification of the surrounding road network making seamless bus to train transfers a possibility. Perhaps most importantly lowering the line would allow development at street level above the track and station. Retailing could be built above the track providing a seamless main street shopping area, while the station precincts could be re-developed with mixed use commercial, residential and retail at potentially high densities.
For example Carnegie station and its car parking covers approximately 15,000 sqm of land, with another 3,000 or so above the corridor on the opposite side of Koornang Rd. With 65% site coverage and five story buildings, there is almost 60,000sqm of floorspace that could be sold or leased to offset the costs of the grade separation and quad tracking. A multi level car park could be built within the development if maintaining park and ride capacity was desired, although decent bus feeders might be a better way to replace that. If taller apartment towers were considered appropriate for the area hundreds of new homes could be integrated in each centre.
This sort of development would be the very definition of a transit oriented urban village: Moderate density mixed use development centred on a rail and bus interchange in the middle of an established local centre. Not only would this improve the efficiency of the existing road and rail networks plus greatly add to the urban design and layout of each of the centres, it would also go some way to achieving the sustainability goals of Melbourne 2030 by meeting growth in established areas. Rather than new car based suburban lots on the fringe of the metropolis, some growth could be met within the urban area in a location with excellent local services and high quality public transport.
The one problem is that such a grand scheme would require an unprecedented level of cooperation between the rail, road and urban development sectors of the government.
I have an alternative idea for the Hughesdale section (albeit now completely off the topic): skip past it and connect to Chadstone instead. What I’d really like to see is a cross-over: East Malvern-Chadstone-Oakleigh mostly running in line with the highway, but with a little tunnel near Paddington Rd and Caulfield-Carnegie (moved to the highway)-Chadstone-Holmesglen (moved to Warrigal Rd.). You can then use the old Oakleigh-Caulfield section to run an express track through that area. Depending on whether you want the corridor for freight it isn’t that difficult to find an alignment from Dandenong along EastLink, past Rowville and tunnel 1.5km to Glen Waverley as well.
Perhaps the easiest there would be to connect the Pakenham line to East Malvern via a 2km stretch of new track on the old outer circle reservation, which would allow better utilisation of the capacity on the Glen Waverley line for services to the south east while including a station within walking distance of Chadstone. That still passes through the Hughesdale choke point however, but it would avoid those at Murrumbeena and Carnegie.
Probably extreme but here goes.
I would imagine that western port would be best served by standard gauge and therefore compatible with the national rail system. When that happens, it has to happen, then I would assume re-routing to Dandenong is far more viable than placing a SG line from ? Caulfield to Frankstone. I also could assume SG to Dandenong is also required for the Gippsland leg.
If and when this occurs then the arguments for interference of pass services beyond Baxter are moot. Before Baxter the BG line would be on its own.
If this were my little sand pit, I would use the freeway as the new rail line and take it almost all the way.
Another thing to consider is the freeway at the city end has a reservation that brings it out at Warragul road and South Road. To the Dandenong rail head its only 5 city blocks. Its an opportunity to thrash road transport as it is.