Victoria's independent advisory body is calling on the state government to duplicate and upgrade the train line in Melbourne’s booming north. It's part of a sweeping list of infrastructure priorities for the next 30 years. The Upfield Line only runs every 20 minutes during peak hour and infrastructure says it's holding the region back.
00:00It's the morning peak in Melbourne's outer north and the trains only come every 20 minutes.
00:10The time is 20 minutes but I denise like 30 or 40 sometimes.
00:14With all the development happening around Coburg, Brunswick and that corridor, it's just going to get busier and more congested.
00:21Residents talk about this all the time. It's such a problem.
00:25The cause of the problem is this single track along the last four kilometres of the line, meaning there's only room for one train at a time.
00:34Well, for people who just missed the train, the next one's about 20 minutes away and Gowrie Station is about four kilometres that way.
00:41Let's see if I can run there before that next train gets there.
00:45You can be waiting on this train station for 20 minutes in peak hour. If that train is cancelled, you're waiting 40 minutes.
00:53What the upfield improvement does is it unlocks around 11,000 new homes and makes much more reliable public transport services available to people in north of Melbourne.
01:05Huh, 22 minutes. Not bad. I think I only got passed by one train, which means I'm still on track to catch that next train.
01:14Infrastructure Victoria says people on the upfield line are waiting up to five times longer than people on stations in the southeast.
01:22It's calling on the government to upgrade and duplicate the line and add an extra stop at Craigieburn.
01:29But the government says it's prioritising upfield's level crossing removals.
01:35The report also calls on the government to redevelop the Alfred, Austin and Royal Melbourne hospitals, which it says have needed redeveloping since 2017.
01:46Jacinta Allen needs to get out of her high viz and hard hat and get down to the Alfred and see the rats and mice and the leaking pipes.
01:56The government says it's already upgrading all three hospitals.
01:59But Infrastructure Victoria says the redevelopment needs an extra six to eight billion dollars over ten years.
Be the first to comment