Saving Money on the 'Melbourne Metro' Plan
This very expensive underground heavy rail project has received initial funding in the 2015-16 Victorian State budget although major work will not commence till after the next election in 2018.
This page looks at ways to cut the cost of the project or avoid doing it at all.
The Melbourne Metro as planned (red) and our shorter and cheaper alternative proposal (blue). (Original diagram from this Age Article) |
Major drawbacks of the current design
- The tunnel part is very expensive at well over $1 billion per kilometre.
- Given that most trains running between Flinders Street and Southern Cross Stations are less than half full even in peak hour it is hard to justify this huge expense.
- For most Dandenong line passengers there will be little or no benefit.
- While this rail subway will alleviate congestion between Southern Cross and Flinders Street this can be achieved at a much lower cost.
- The system will take over a decade to complete.
- Building the 'Melbourne Metro' portal near South Yarra will severely disrupt rail services there during construction.
- Both Parkville and Domain are very well serviced by trams already while Arden is a very close to the existing North Melbourne station.
The cheaper alternative
The actual rail bottleneck is the six-track viaduct between Flinders Street and Southern Cross Stations. A short Flinders Street Metro Link (shown above in blue) between Richmond and North Melbourne or Flinders Street and North Melbourne would remove this constraint for 25 to 30% of the price of the full 5-station 9 km tunnel.
However, it is still dubious that even this short tunnel can be justified given there is still a great deal of room to improve services with the existing track layout.
Modified city loop operation
The below diagram shows how the train operation in the Melbourne CBD could be changed to allow almost twice as many trains to be operated to the CBD with minimal track changes - if any.
- All Eastern-suburbs trains run direct to Flinders Street.
- All Ex-North Melbourne trains run direct to Southern Cross.
- All Dandenong, Glen Waverley and Alamein trains terminate at Flinders Street.
- All Sydenham, Werribee and Williamstown trains terminate at Southern Cross
- A City circle train is re-introduced on the under-utilised Clifton Hill loop (Red)
(Modified from PTUA map)
Other cost-effective improvements
Cheaper upgrades to the network would allow many more services to be scheduled around the loop and throughout the network.
- Upgrade signalling across the metro network to allow trains to operate with 2 minute headway - as is already the case in the city loop.
- Upgrade single-track sections of the network (especially on the Cranbourne line) to double track removing bottlenecks that restrict efficient timetabling options.
- When changing the tracks to remove level crossings leave space for a third express track in the centre between the re-built platforms. This would be particularly useful on the Dandenong line which is to be rebuilt in 2016/17 to remove all the level crossings anyway.
A central express track like the above would allow V/Line and Metro express services to get ahead of stopping-all-stations trains. The direction of the central track would switch at 01:00 and 13:00 each day. (Adjusted image of the new two-track Springvale Station which was rebuilt in 2014 without any space for such a third track). |