A new cross-city rail tunnel providing faster and more frequent trains to Melbourne’s growing western and north-eastern suburbs was slated to open as early as 2030 before being delayed indefinitely when the state government committed to building the Suburban Rail Loop through the eastern suburbs.
Transport experts say booming areas around Melton, Wyndham Vale and Werribee cannot get the modern train services they need without a second rail corridor to the CBD and are calling for detailed planning work on the Melbourne Metro 2 (MM2) to begin.
Whatever happened and why has it not been delivered extension of the RRL line from Wyndham Vale and Werribee with the addition of West Werribee railway station? This has conveniently been dropped even thou it would be a great way to spread passenger load between Wyndham Vale and the City. Passenger with this service could take either path. Yet another poorly planned and neglected low hanging fruit with immediate benefits.
Documents seen by The Age reveal how prominent the MM2 once was in state government transport plans and how quickly it disappeared after the former Andrews government embarked on the SRL East and North projects in 2018.
Melbourne’s west is Australia’s fastest-growing region. Wyndham and Melton residents complain of overcrowding on the V/Line trains they share with regional travellers.
Geelong and Ballarat together are almost the size of Canberra in population but do not have a passenger rail service between them despite V/Line controlling and managing the track even with the hundred’s of millions spent on track upgrades.
The Age is increasing its focus on Melbourne’s booming west with a special series examining the positives and challenges for the region. Our reporters are moderating a West of Melbourne Economic Development Alliance’s (WoMEDA)summit, which begins on Wednesday night.
A Victoria University report, commissioned by WoMEDA, shows that within the next decade more than half of the western suburbs workforce will commute outside the region to work, putting further pressure on congested roads and public transport while reducing quality of life.
These projects will not have been started by that time, it is now a crisis what will it be in 10 years time? Transport Victoria has but one job, to efficiently plan and deliver public transport projects for the people of this state, they have completed failed.
The MM2 was first detailed in a rail Network Development Plan published in 2013, and consisted of a 15-kilometre rail tunnel from Newport to Clifton Hill, via Fishermans Bend, the CBD, Parkville and Fitzroy.
It was seen as a follow-up project to the soon-to-open Metro Tunnel (or Melbourne Metro 1) that replicates many of the same benefits. The MM2 would link the Werribee and Mernda lines and unlock development in the now-stalled Fishermans Bend precinct.
This is an urgent project as is the Ballarat and Geelong electrification and addition of capacity without the need for platform lengthening.
The transport department has not publicly released a long-term rail network plan since Labor won power in 2014.
What have they been doing during this time, they have but one job!
But a Public Transport Victoria plan from April 2018, seen by The Age, shows the now-defunct agency envisaged that a western leg of the MM2 – connecting Werribee to Parkville – would open in 2030.
A second stage, from Parkville to Clifton Hill, would have been completed in 2034, the confidential plan shows.
They need to be delivered together. It sure seems like the much needed project MM@ has been shelved for the never needed North East Link Project (which does not have a business case) and the Suburban Rail Loop.
But less than a year later, the MM2 was airbrushed out after then-premier Daniel Andrews announced Labor’s commitment to the Suburban Rail Loop in the lead-up to his November 2018 election victory.
The damage to this economy and state by this man knows no bounds.
The $34.5 billion SRL East, from Cheltenham to Box Hill, is set to open in 2035, followed by SRL North, from Box Hill to Melbourne Airport, in the early 2050s.
Victoria’s Rail Plan from February 2019 introduces SRL East and SRL North and removes any mention of the MM2.
Criminal to remove it and replace it with a project that does not in any way address the needs of the western suburbs.
Instead, the plan makes a vague reference to a project that would deliver “increased capacity from the west and the north-west” and be built in the third of three future “horizons”.
The SRL North, which has a 2053 completion date, is also in “Horizon 3”, suggesting MM2 was pushed back 20 years or more.
The 2019 plan is marked cabinet-in-confidence and was signed off by now-premier Jacinta Allan, in her former role as infrastructure minister, and Melissa Horne, the then transport minister and member for Williamstown.
Eric Keys, a transport planner and project director of the Metro Tunnel during its early development, said the state government needed to start detailed planning for the MM2 or the western suburbs would be condemned to suffer the economic, health and environmental impacts of car dependency.
We are already at that stage now, it has been an appalling mess undersee by Spears the head of Transport Victoria. It is even worse for freight services which are abandoning rail (due to V/Line outages and issues) and moving more freight by truck assisted by poor policy out of Freight Victoria.
“Abandoning the long-mooted Melbourne Metro 2 will undermine two decades of planning work to ensure Melbourne’s west is provided with the sort of public transport infrastructure taken for granted in the south-eastern suburbs,” he said.
Rail Futures Institute president John Hearsch said the MM2 was essential to enabling high-frequency rail services to the west, especially when the Melbourne Airport Rail Link is built in the early 2030s and takes up some of the already limited capacity.
“Fundamentally, what the rail system lacks is more capacity between the CBD and Sunshine,” he said. “There is no other solution – you have to have another corridor.”
This is so true and pivotal to the development of rail to the west. We need another access method to the west from the CBD and MM2 satisfies this requirement. I would make it 4 tracks under the ground connecting not only to the CBD and Clifton Hill but from Newport to Fisherman’s Bend and thence to St Kilda and to South Yarra enabling a bypass the city for the Geelong and Ballarat Lines. Add the connection between Werribee West and Wyndham Vale and you can access both the Ballarat and Geelong lines from Newport or Ballarat via Geelong Corio.
Greater Geelong and Ballarat have almost the same population as Canberra. They need to be connected together and both connected to Melbourne via Newport and Sunshine.
Infrastructure Victoria said in 2021 that the MM2 could be needed as soon as 2036, could take a decade to build and cost between $27.4 billion and $36.7 billion.
So why is it no underway? This government has botched the transport planning and the liberals are no better.
It estimated the number of Wyndham residents who could access a job within 60 minutes would increase by 22 per cent by 2050 if the MM2 was built, and called for the government to produce a business case and protect land for the project.
You are talking about a generation away when the problem is now.
It is not clear if the transport department has revived MM2 in its rail plans since 2019 and if so, what the delivery time frame is.
Earlier this month it released a new Fishermans Bend Integrated Transport Plan, which proposes two underground train stations in the urban renewal precinct and a third next to Marvel Stadium in Docklands, which could connect to Southern Cross, in the 2050s.
They said the state government was investing $650 million on Melton line upgrades to prepare for longer V/Line trains and that the $4 billion Sunshine Superhub work would enable its eventual electrification.
A wasted $650M of Melton Line upgrades without electrification to Ballarat. There is no need at all to lengthen any platforms to upgrade the line to Ballarat. This is again poor transport planning and an admission of how poorly planned and wasteful transport planning is under Spears.
Original Source: The Age
Changed when SRL was devised making it impossible to then invest in the western suburbs. The MM2 is a vital project adding more value than SRL.
We have it completely wrong in Melbourne we will have invested over $70b in roads by the end of the decade. How stupid this that.