Level crossing removal update Nov 2018

Going through those three V/Line ones now!
Did Labor give any indication of how?Fitzgerald Rd – will have to be a trench due to it being on an intersection and right next to the Western Ring Rd. Station Rd – probably also needs to be a trench due to also being on an intersection – so a new Deer Park Station as well I imagine. Robinsons Rd – could do road over, although there are houses quite near to the crossing – does this one provide an opportunity to fix up the rail junction? Will all of these end up like St Albans and the Frankston line – a rail rollercoaster?

Would it be physically possible to do Toorak Rd without doing Tooronga Rd?

I wouldn’t be surprised if Macaulay Rd Kensington on the Craigieburn line will have to wait until the possibility of airport rail via metropolitan tracks through Flemington Racecourse is clearer. The option still exists despite the Sunshine preference. Would any airport rail past Kensington require quadruplication of the Craigieburn tracks?

Wood St (Fyans St/Carr St) South Geelong and Barwon Heads Road Marshall will be completed with South Geelong-Waurn Ponds track duplication & Barwon Heads Rd duplication (pledged by both parties). Whilst not apart of “level crossing removals” both crossings will be removed.

You know you don’t have to remove all level crossings. The Yamanote line in Tokyo still has one, although it is where there are only two tracks with no parallel lines. I would imagine it is going to disappear at some point in the far future though, as railway companies, not governments eventually remove them for ahem, greater reliability and relieving local residential gripes or alternatively as part of other work like adding extra tracks.

You must have missed my comment on your post last month…

The LXRA website fact sheets suggest early preferences are “Road over” for Hoppers Crossing, “Lowered road under Rail” for Sunbury, and “Rail under” for Mont Albert & Surrey Hills.

The LXRA have hidden the fact sheets & videos during caretaker mode, but you can find them here – https://levelcrossings.vic.gov.au/media/news/prioritising-future-level-crossing-removals

It has loosely been implied the Upfield Line will become a skyrail from Moreland to Coburg, not sure if you want to add Moreland Rd & Bell St as “Rail Over” although LXRA website still states a rail under trench as a feasible option in consideration for both.

The original package is still a net 50 grade separations given the 2 planned crossing closures in Carrum/Bonbeach (Eel Race Rd was on the 2014 list, with Mascot Ave/Station St was added to the list last year in exchange for the new Station St bridge over Patterson River (which opened in September)) – there would be a political risk by using a figure of 52+25 that the Liberals would spread fear other crossings on the list would closures too.

Chelsea Rd has been stated as “rail under” by both parties although no mention of any road network changes, which would be similar to Carrum. Ideally, the Chelsea Rd crossing needs to be replaced with a direct Thames Promenade connection 100m up the line, which could potentially allow Swanpool Ave crossing to be closed too.

Also for your list, Mountain Hwy Bayswater was completed as “Rail Under” (although this was hybrid design, with the road also raised slightly.)

Bondi Rd is the level crossing at Bonbeach station. Station Street is the crossing further south near the river that is being replaced with the new road over river bridge linking Station St, Bonbeach and Station St, Carrum, allowing local traffic to avoid crossing the railway twice to use the Nepean Highway. It actually brings the total of level crossings abolished as part of the ALP`s original list to 52 but keeps the total of new grade separations at 50 (The addition of Park Rd, Cheltenham is balanced by the scrapping of the Eel Race Rd crossing as part of the Carrum Skyrail project).

Gap Rd Sunbury was non-Metro in 2008 when the ACLAM list was done but Sunbury electrification has made it Metro since 2012 (and probably further up the list), just like Melton Rd, Sydenham (which has been updated).

Labor’s level crossing removal program was the biggest factor in my decision to vote for them in 2014, and the fact that they’ve met and exceeded their targets shows they’ve been a fair dinkum government in my opinion, so I’ve voted for them again this time.

The Liberals’ plan to grade separate road crossings instead of level crossings would be an unprecedented act of vandalism to the streetscape of Melbourne. How did such a bone-headed idea get to be policy for a serious contender to run the state?

I think we really are coming closer to a literal giant douche and a turd as far as Australian politics is concerned. South Park was right all along (how unsurprising, they’ve predicted just about everything else).

I voted for anyone that wasn’t Liberal on the counts that I was bombarded by Liberal spam mail in the letterbox which is of course legal if you are a politician but illegal and with fines if you are not. For the record, Labor or The Greens did not send me anything whatsoever (or if they did, it wasn’t an addressed letter thus it found the recycle bin within three seconds of leaving the letterbox along with the other junk mail).

The mail itself was a postage paid windowed envelope with “IMPORTANT Voting Information” printed on it (with the word “important” being in red caps). The letter inside was nothing but a single-sided A4 sheet of propaganda from Dee Ryall (anagram: Lardy Eel), with next to no information aside from the Liberal logo, her photo and some crap about how only she and Matthew Guy can do this that and the other, and not even a way to actually vote or any information whatsover e.g. nothing but junk. Yet, it was regarded as “important” voting information, as though if I didn’t open and read it I would be fined or jailed or something. I’m 110% sure that I would be either fined or jailed if I started to send identical spam to her because that’s how the law works.

@ Philip: I hope no-one spends a fortune on grade separating a single track either. Lilydale needs a fortune and a half spent on it to add the second track that was promised forty to fifty years ago, but at this rate, the Hurstbridge line in its entirety will be duplicated and running every ten minutes until midnight long before Lilydale is touched. As long as Lilydale, Belgrave, Alamein and Glen Waverley are all left in the same basket nothing will ever change as it would require a complete overhaul of the timetables. Consider the Burnley group a relic of before World War II while every other line ends up being done (Upfield is next I think). The 1939 VR Lilydale (Croydon) line working timetable is almost identical to the current Lilydale timetable, right down to the express services and Ringwood-only trains from the city (the main differences being that most trains terminated at Croydon in 1939, short runs terminated at Box Hill instead of Blackburn, most trains stopped at East Richmond, and Laburnum and Heatherdale stations didn’t exist).

@ DD: How did the bone-headed Liberals get to become a serious contender to run the state (or country) in the first place? I guess it’s good to know people in high places, such as VicRoads and the mega corporations, who will gladly keep the votes up as long as money keeps exchanging hands.

I noticed Gap Road in Sunbury is listed under Non-Metro but is probably Metropolitan now. I wonder what else in the list is no longer considered non-metro.

@Heihachi_73 All of the envelopes I got (3 ALP, 1 LNP) had “important” which made me wonder if I had a speeding fine or something, but *no* envelope had any party information at all.

I agree with the rest of your post, the opposition is weak and has been weak for the past 4 years too.

Hi Daniel,

I’ve been thinking about plotting a basic Google Map of current Melbourne level crossings by category for a while, and ended up making one today. It’s quite basic currently, but I hope to add to it as I have the time – here it is:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1BI6RYOhSUmx3nYaHXHoeRVO48IJSlsiK&usp=sharing