I arrived at the new Melton Station this week expecting the modern, accessible facility the government has been promoting for months. What I found instead was a half-built shell of a station dressed up for a ribbon-cutting.
There are no public toilets. There is no café, no kiosk, nowhere to grab a coffee before the morning commute — just commuters standing on exposed platforms, hoping the trains run on time because there’s genuinely nothing else to do while you wait.
The lifts and stairs work, the platforms are long enough for the promised nine-car trains, and the underpass gets you under the line safely. But calling this a finished station is a stretch. Walk around the precinct and you’ll see unfinished paving, hoarded-off sections, and construction equipment still parked where a waiting room is supposedly going to be. The bus interchange isn’t built. The air-conditioned waiting room everyone was told about doesn’t exist yet.
And yet, to hear the government tell it, Melton has a shiny new station, mission accomplished, ribbon cut, press conference held. That’s the part that grates. Commuters aren’t asking for marble floors — we’re asking for a toilet and a coffee before a 45-minute train ride into the city. These aren’t luxuries; they’re the basics you’d expect from any train station, let alone one being celebrated as a centerpiece infrastructure win.
If this is what “open” looks like, I’d hate to see what “still under construction” is meant to be, because right now they look identical. Melton commuters deserve honesty about the timeline, not a premature victory lap dressed up as a finished product. Until there’s a working toilet and somewhere to buy a coffee, this station isn’t done — it’s just open.
