{"id":378396,"date":"2026-03-01T14:58:58","date_gmt":"2026-03-01T04:58:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=378396"},"modified":"2026-03-01T14:59:00","modified_gmt":"2026-03-01T04:59:00","slug":"is-your-local-train-station-about-to-lose-its-psos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=378396","title":{"rendered":"Is your local train station about to lose it\u2019s PSOs?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The Allan government has been slammed for playing \u201cRussian roulette with public safety\u201d after Victoria Police refused to identify which train stations will lose permanent protective services officers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Expected Changes to Train Station Patrols<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Under the new 2026 deployment strategy, the current guarantee of PSOs at every metropolitan station from 6:00 PM to the last train will change as follows:&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>32 &#8220;High-Risk&#8221; Stations:<\/strong>\u00a0Will receive an expanded day-and-night PSO presence.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>72 &#8220;Lower-Crime&#8221; Stations:<\/strong>\u00a0Will maintain a permanent nightly presence from 6:00 PM.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>120 &#8220;Low-Crime&#8221; Stations:<\/strong>\u00a0Will lose permanent static patrols. These stations will instead be monitored by\u00a0<strong>roving teams<\/strong>\u00a0of PSOs who will cover clusters of six stations each.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Current Status and Delays<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Publication Delay:<\/strong>\u00a0While the changes were originally slated for earlier implementation, the specific list of affected stations is now expected to be released in\u00a0<strong>April 2026<\/strong>.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Shopping Centre Expansion:<\/strong>\u00a0Concurrent with the station reductions, the government has invested $6.5 million to extend the trial of PSOs patrolling major shopping centres (such as Northland, Eastland, and Highpoint) until the end of 2026.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Government Stance:<\/strong>\u00a0The government maintains that no final decisions on the exact station-by-station model have been finalised, and deployment remains a decision for Victoria Police based on intelligence.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Allan government has been slammed for playing \u201cRussian roulette with public safety\u201d,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":237251,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9770,10073,47],"tags":[993,19734,8],"class_list":["post-378396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-metro-trains-melbourne","category-myki","category-rail-news","tag-melbourne","tag-pso","tag-victoria"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=378396"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378396\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":378397,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378396\/revisions\/378397"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/237251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=378396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=378396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=378396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}