Re: (Vic)Mildura passenger service plan

[Vaughan Williams <ender2000@my-deja.com>]

> There is no "Super dooper high speed trains" in plan, just 59
sprinters
> on order with 80m$ tracks upgrade for Ballarat/Traralgon/Bediego
> services to shorten the journey time. The only problem is these trains
> won't be delivered till 2003, I'm not sure these town folks willing to
> wait that long.

Well, one city council is carrying on about a nuclear powered monorail
fantastically expensive mag lev titanium-alloy tilt train to run on
extra-special track from melb - bendigo - s/hill - mildura, but thats
probably them just kite-flying.

The danger is that a few rail buffs - and I refer only to the ones who
are quite mad - together with the road engineers and the snake-oil
salespersons at the DOI will get together and work out some
ridiculously fast and expensive train in one or two corridors running
once a day and in the meantime all the other rail lines will fall to
pieces.

The $80m isn't just for track upgrades. The Labor policy was to use the
$80m to "kick start" the projects - so this has the potential to blow
up in everybody's face and result in a private operator putting up some
service of the type described above and charging a high fare so they
only carry trainspotters and old age pensioners (who can travel cheaply
because of their travel vouchers).

I'd say its much better to spend the 80 million replacing some sleepers
and straigtening some curves - mainly on the ballarat line - and
letting the new super sprinters, combined with more express trains, do
the rest in terms of travel time. Its an incremental thing - some
improvements can be had immediately and others may take a little
longer. The travel times the government has set - eg, 1hr 20mins to
Bendigo - are realistic and achieveable without spending very much at
all. Expresses to Bendigo now take 1hr 40mins. Saving twenty minutes
should be easy once the new trains arrive, in the meantime, perhaps ten
can be saved by fixing up those parts of the line that are in poor
condidion.

Otherwise we could end up with a train roaring through, for example,
the marginal seat of Gisborne without stopping anywhere (except
Kyneton, if youre lucky) between spencer st and castlemaine. It doesn't
do the good citizens of Woodend much good to have a train roar past
them at 200 km/hr.

This "doing more with less" is what we need to see.

> You can start up with extension of some current Ballarat service to
> Maryborough/Ararat.

Yes, do it!

> Hopefully they(Labour) won't forget interstate service as well such
> as "Overland".

Well, thats the federal governments fault for privatising it without
any guarantee it would continue. This pontious pilate approach is what
is dangerous about privatisation. Flogging the service off does not by
itself make it improve.

Vaughan


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