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Toxic Custard newsletter transport

Metro rail tunnel: The time is right

The metro rail tunnel concept is about ten years old, having first publicly emerged in late-2005. In some quarters, it’s been seen as an unnecessary white elephant — an expensive way of providing for extra passenger capacity in the CBD, when other cheaper ways were available to cope with increased patronage. But time has passed,  ... [More]

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transport

Melbourne Rail Link: has it been properly planned?

As I’ve written already, both the Metro Rail Tunnel and the Melbourne Rail Link provide similar benefits in terms of rail capacity in the central part of Melbourne’s rail network. In those terms, they are roughly equivalent. But MRL does have problems. For example, I think it connects the wrong lines. Connecting lines Both MRL  ... [More]

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transport

Rail tunnel plans compared

There’s plenty of confusion over the various rail tunnel proposals. The Coalition is pushing theirs, Labor’s saying they’ll stick to the original plan. On the bright side: The major parties aren’t arguing about whether a rail line should be built, but which route it should take. Both schemes appear to achieve the goal of separating  ... [More]

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transport

Revised (and renamed, again) rail tunnel plans – not as bad as first thought

The metro rail tunnel has been renamed again. What has been at various times “Metro 1+Metro 2”, “the Metro Tunnel”, and the “Metro Rail Capacity Project” is now “Melbourne Rail Link”. The plans for the revised version are not as bad as first thought. The Frankston line will run from South Yarra to Domain and  ... [More]

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transport

Metro rail tunnel realignment – what a stuff-up #SpringSt

UPDATE 7:30pm: The government has released details which vary from the assumptions in this post. See this followup post. Oh lordy. As some have feared, it looks like the Napthine government is about to stuff-up the metro rail tunnel, which is proposed to connect the Sunshine/Sunbury and Dandenong lines. The Herald Sun reports: WORK on  ... [More]

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transport

Metro 1/Metro 2/Metro Rail Capacity Project – The Metro rail tunnel’s many names

There seems to be a little confusion over the various names of the Metro rail tunnel — for instance the name Metro One pops up regularly, especially out of the City Of Melbourne. The confusion is not surprising, as the name and design of the tunnel has changed a bit over the years. Origins The  ... [More]

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transport

Investment in motorways vs rail capacity – where are we at?

There’s been some speculation about who is running the SpringStSource Twitter account and web site. The web domain name is registered through WhoIsGuard, a Panama-based service specifically for hiding details of people who want to remain anonymous. It’s not hard to see whoever is behind it is well and truly on the side of the  ... [More]

Categories
transport

Regional Rail Link: Melbourne’s first brand new suburban train line since 1930

It’s often said that there hasn’t been a suburban rail line built in Melbourne since the Glen Waverley line opened in 1930. To be precise, that year it was extended from Darling to Glen Waverley. Others built or extended since then have either been electrification along existing lines, or re-openings of lines along old alignments:  ... [More]

Categories
transport

Compared: Metro rail tunnel vs East West Road – which is more efficient at moving people? #SpringSt

The way the state budget has been framed in terms of transport was almost inevitable: the East-West motorway (stage 1) vs the Metro Rail Tunnel, with the motorway winning this round. While they are quite different projects, serving (mostly) different markets and (attempting to be) solving different problems, I thought it might be interesting to  ... [More]

Categories
transport

Trying to make sense of the Metro Tunnel “concept of operations” draft document

A couple of months ago PTV released a set of three technical documents related to the Metro rail tunnel. I’ve done some skimming through two of them so far (I hope to read the third soon), and am posting some notes from the first one here that I hope might be of interest to people:  ... [More]