Dud deal for rail travellers
Gippsland rail travellers will continue to wear the pain of frequent service disruptions but for little or no gain, according to Member for Narracan Gary Blackwood.
Commuters returning to work in the city after the Christmas-New Year period will face trips that will take up to an hour longer in each direction from today until Wednesday, January 17, as road coaches are used for part of the trips.
And, although it hasn’t yet announced specific details, V/Line has foreshadowed “changes to some other services” over the next two months.
Mr Blackwood said the inconvenience Gippslanders were forced to endure would not lead to future travel improvements for the region, as works causing the current delays were to improve metropolitan services through level crossing removals between Dandenong and Caulfield and upgrades to systems on the metropolitan network.
Monthly performance results published by V/Line show punctuality on the Traralgon-Melbourne line was by far the worst on any of the five “short distance” country routes – Traralgon, Geelong, Ballarat, Bendigo and Seymour – over the past year.
Mr Blackwood said responses he received late last month from Public Transport Minister Jacinta Allan to questions on notice he’d submitted to parliament a month earlier showed the mooted $530 million Gippsland line upgrade would not deliver one new peak morning or evening service for the region.
The Minister stated “upgrades will provide capacity to deliver a 40-minute off peak frequency upon completion”.
“Additional non-peak services don’t address the core issue of more peak services that commuters want and are asking for,” Mr Blackwood said.
He said the region’s train users were getting a dud deal, especially when compared to the massive boost in services that Bendigo, Ballarat and Geelong were getting.
For 16 days - starting from today - train travellers will need to swap to road coaches for travel between Southern Cross station and Pakenham.
Some trains leaving Pakenham for Traralgon will have altered departure times as they wait to connect with coaches.
And for one of the days during that period – Wednesday, January 10 - no trains will run at all during most of the peak time.
Eight services that leave Traralgon for the city between 4.36 a.m. and 8.10 a.m. will all be replaced by road coaches as will the 6.14 a.m., 7.20 a.m., 7.46 a.m. and 8.13 a.m. Gippsland-bound trains from the city.
Ms Allan’s written answers to Mr Blackwood indicate the State and Federal governments are still working to “finalise the high-level agreement that will over-arch” investment in regional rail in Victoria, including the $530 million Gippsland upgrade.
She claimed it would boost capacity and reliability on the line with more sections of the track duplicated and signalling and level crossing improvements.
Mr Blackwood said the Minister did not answer his queries about when these works were expected to start and be completed.