Re: Airport rail link

[amorton@mullian.ee.mu.oz.au (Anthony Morton)]

Alex Pout <alpout@optusnet.com.au> wrote:

>So a ring line would be useless, considering that the Northern/Western Ring
>Rd has just been built in the last few years, and never seems short of cars,

Actually there are a number of radial trips that are catered for by the
Western Ring Road:
- People all the way from Brunswick to Frankston use it to access the Hume
  Highway, as an alternative to Sydney Rd.
- People from the eastern suburbs use it to access the Western Highway, as
  an alternative to Ballarat Rd.
- People from the western suburbs use it to access the central city via the
  West Gate Freeway.  (Ever notice how much West Gate traffic has increased
  since the southern section of the ring road opened?)

These are all popular trips and account for much of the traffic on the Ring
Road.  But if they were being made by rail, they would be most appropriately
done using the radial network.  The only reason this isn't true for roads is
that we don't have freeways slicing through the inner city, and that roads
can only carry a relatively small level of traffic before becoming congested.

>and that the Scoresby Fwy was still reasonably high on the planning agenda
>when I left Melbourne in July? (I know it was cancelled, or is that really
>just postponed?)

There is no good reason why the Scoresby Fwy should still be on the agenda,
except that a Vicroads-dominated DoI bureaucracy and a powerful road lobby
wants it built.

>Or that Springvale Rd, Stud Rd, Punt Rd, etc are always busy?

If you track the individual vehicles on Springvale Rd or Stud Rd you'll find
that relatively few stay on the road for very long.  On those occasions when
I drove a car to Frankston from the city (a radial journey) I'd use the
southern end of Springvale Rd.  Many people in that area have to travel
north-south for a small distance even if their trip is predominantly east-
west, because of the hierarchical grid layout of the arterial roads.  What
you observe is a large number of short trips adding up to heavy traffic
throughout.

>That Citylink was built to connect the West Gate, Tulla and Monash
>Fwys?  It always struck me as being pretty useless at accessing the city.

Yet you'll find that's what it's predominantly used for.  The amount of
traffic wanting to access the city is disproportionately higher than the
amount wanting to bypass the city.

>I know that there isn't much across the north east, out towards Bundoora, but
>that area is still expanding, so wouldn't it make sense to provide the
>access for it now, while there's time and space?

That's what the rail extension to South Morang is for.

>I'd also argue, that as more of an occasional public transport user (being
>stuck in the country doesn't help), being able to get on one mode of
>transport to get to my destination would be preferable to using 2 or 3, such
>as bus/train interchanges.  For example, in Melbourne, I would prefer to
>travel by train from say Coburg to Balaclava the whole way (after changing
>somewhere in the loop), rather than jump on a tram at FSS to go down St
>Kilda Rd.

Of course, because the train gets to Balaclava quicker than the tram does.
Nevertheless, large numbers of people do change from trains at FSS onto trams
to access the intermediate destinations along St Kilda Rd that aren't served
by rail.  If you want to improve the PT access for this important area you can
do two things: build an entirely new railway down St Kilda Rd (costly and
difficult), or make the train-tram option more convenient (with tram priority
and better interchange facilities at Princes Bridge).

>I think that's one thing that holds public transport back, that
>personally I'd spend say an hour driving straight to my destination, rather
>than 15 minutes on a bus, change for a train, wait 5 minutes for it, spend
>40 on it, then tram/bus at the other end to get to my final destination.

Actually, you've just described what I put up with every day.  But I prefer
this (marginally) to driving because I can read the newspaper or a good book
en route, and it's cheaper.  Still, de gustibus.....

>Final point: if the options are there for people to use, then they'll use
>them, IMHO.  To get cars out of cities, then the PT has to at the least be
>comparable to driving in both convenience and time factors.

Very true.

>Now, for the
>eastern suburbs of Melbourne, the trains are popular because they take a
>similar time to get into the city, there's a fair few stations, and avoiding
>some of the roads out that way is a bit of a mission, but out to the
>northeast around to the west, where the freeway network is more developed
>and the population is smaller, then trains can't compete.  Rings around
>cities at least give people the option of how close they want to go before
>changing.

If trains can't compete it's not because of some innate advantage of car
travel, it's just that governments have built so many roads (perhaps to allow
middle-class Melburnians to avoid the western suburbs) while leaving public
transport to rot.  It's still true that most travel is radial; the missing
link that stops people using PT is the local bus networks that could take
people to the railway station.  At the moment you have to drive to the station,
and if you've driven that far it's easier to just go the whole way.

Regards,
Tony M.