You could do a cut & cover along Rosamond Rd and I would also suggest a station close to VUT or Western Hospital.

The train line woudl like up a number of tram and bus routes from the west into the city much faster then what on-road PT offers now.

Considering it as part of the larger network, i.e. CBD train + feeder bus from Highpoint it is quite possible that people would be encouraged to visit Highpoint on the way home from work to do their shopping where otherwise they may have gone home first and driven elsewhere. This is why feeder bus/tram access to and from Highpoint is such an important consideration.

That said, I;m not a fan of the spur, regardless of cost. I would prefer Williamstown services to run to Highpoint via Footscray, complementing the future Newport to Southern Cross tunnel

If Highpoint was to get an east-west rail line it would likely come from Ascot Vale or Moonee Ponds (preferred over the showgrounds imho) and probably be a short tram stop away in the old defence lands.

Perhaps you could shorten the line by coming off Flemo Rc at a point where the line is heading WNW and continuing direct across the river, under the ground and terminating on the highpoint grounds but not as far in as shown.

Maybe cut 25% off the lenght? Point still taken of course, not sure in whose interest this line is.

Agree re. the guiding principles for buses Riccardo. Bus routes need to be short, high frequency and well advertised (perhaps including being shown on rail network maps). The 401 follows some of these principles and is a good start. No need to necessarily use a VR style setup when fixed rail is put in – just choose the best technology to suit the task required of it. If that means Tyne and Wear or DLR style light rail, or even monorail etc then so be it. No need to stick to a certain mode – we should target a service standard and choose the best way to fit it.

Also agree re. disliking buses. I’ve grown up in Melbourne and naturally grown to hate them because they are so damn bad here. But when you go overseas you realise they can work well in a public transport system(I think London buses even carry more passengers than the tube). With buses representing such an engrained rubbish service standard here, I suppose you can understand people wanting trains or trams as a way out of that rut though.

Peter, completely agree – fixing up the whole 82 could yield some extra efficiencies with a clean up of bus services. To my mind, this is so important because every bus running a duplicated or otherwise useless service could be redeployed to boosting frequency on a worthwhile route for basically no money, which feeds into the tipping point issue being discussed over at Riccardo’s blog at the moment.

Agree that the smartbus corridors are mostly viable for high frequency services. Chopping the routes into bits wouldn’t be a bad idea either – I doubt many people (if any) are going end to end.

cheers

In any proper transport system, your main road bus routes and major rail corridors would have services frequent enough to not need to worry about scheduling connections.

Doing the above would allow Route 406 to be abolished. This would strengthen the case for extending 57 to Milleara Mall/Buckely St, which chould become a local activity centre. From there, three or four routes could run, as follows: (i) existing 465, (ii) existing 475, but possibly extended to Airport West and (iii) a mini-bus route to Highpoint via unserved areas of Avondale Hts.

Ricc: Agreed that 888 is not that time-efficient between Nunawading and Chelsea.

Currently its timetable isn’t up to Smartbus standards, it has a reputation for late running and there’s poor pedestrian access at the Chelsea end.

But, especially for those who live away from the station, it could be travel time competitive with the train (though not Eastlink). While the effect would be small not that many people travel from Nunawading to Chelsea), it could very slighly relieve peak train loading and provide a minor back-up during train disruptions.

Almost all of the orbital routes (plus others) are justifiable as high frequency corridors. Whether they end up being long or short routes is probably less important than the service level actually being there. Having said that, I lean against long routes due to poor time-keeping and the inability to schedule multiple connections with trains.

This is not much better than a typical peakhour journey by rail between the same places.

Re the “don’t you like buses” comment – honestly no, I don’t, but I do recognise them as a very important part of the system.

Having caught them a lot in Japan and found them perfectly fine which made me realise that the reason I didn’t like them here was because they were so bad here.

That said, I’m a train fan, with no apology for it.

But we see eye-to-eye because the best thing I could for rail, if I were in charge of it, is to stop wasting money on stupid ideas. Now most would think would that means don’t go listening to Railpage, which is true.

But I would also say that stupid ideas are coming from the Birdpoo house and also from the government’s advisers such as Sir Rod.

I don’t blame him; the parameters he was set make it impossible to come up with the sorts of ideas we come up with.

Back to buses – I have had my hopes dashed by these silly smartbus nonsense and ridiculously long orbital routes which do not really meet any need in Melbourne. Not saying the individual sections, but these routes as a whole. I don’t believe they beat the radial rail network enough to be justified

No new customers will go to Highpoint from the CBD side, so no need for a rail link from that end. It may pick up some local suburban commuters but I doubt Highpoint mgt suggested it for their benefit

82 is a lost opportunity, it seems to be aimed at reaching abandoned factories in the backstreet, a legacy of what the line was built for, to get Footscray working class people to their jobs at the munitions factory, now not needed.

I think 82 could be cost-effectively moved closer to Highpoint but 82 would need to better connected to the rest of the system as Phin said, for example at Ascot Vale or without doing the grand tour of Footscray.

These off-network major traffic attractors definitely need rail in the longer term but the best way of proving the point is well designed, promoted and used bus services. These services, as I suggested with Oak-Chadstone, need to be very simple shuttles doing continuous round trips. They could then be shown on rail maps as part of the system.

If such a bus was packed to the rafters every minute and needed further expansion that would be my cue for a new fixed rail link.

It should be noted that I have no view of what rail technology might be best for these shuttles. While there is some good sense in using heavy rail, I am agostic as to whether light rail or monorail might also do the job – the key determinant should be fitness for purpose – speed, cost to run and so on.

It is plausible that on a fixed rail shuttle from Oakleigh to Chadstone, a heavy rail underground might only cruise at 40km/h (not unreasonable on a short running underground section) but a light rail service on a separated, but otherwise low-scale corridor might equal this, as might a monorail.

The main barrier to monorail would be aesthetics, and that you can only add stations at considerable expense. Light rail can have additional stops added fairly cheaply. Finding an above ground corridor could be a stretch – you might need to take land from Warrigal Rd.

I certainly don’t favour heavy rail just because it would be compatible with the current legacy VR services – they are nothing you would want to lock in as a future standard!