Train timetables are stuck in ‘the 1990s’ for Melbourne’s north and west

Pratima Karki takes a precarious 1½-hour odyssey from her home in Craigieburn in Melbourne’s outer north to university in the inner west.

First, she walks to the bus stop. Second, she rides the bus for 20 minutes. Third, she boards a train for a 40-minute journey. Fourth, she changes at North Melbourne station. Fifth, she hurries from Footscray station to Victoria University. Then she does it all again in reverse to get home.

Pratima Karki can be left stranded for more than 30 minutes at Craigieburn station because of its infrequent off-peak services.Credit: Justin McManus

But unlike her peers on the other side of Melbourne, or other students interstate, if Pratima puts a foot wrong on her journey she can end up stuck for a long time.

“I’ve had the experience of missing [the train] by a second, and I miss the first hour of my class,” she said.

New analysis by a transport expert shows train lines in Melbourne’s north and west have less frequent train services each week compared to those in the city’s south-east, or similar rail lines in Sydney and Perth.

The analysis adds to intensifying pressure for a timetable revamp to bring Victoria’s metropolitan network closer to a modern “turn-up-and-go” system.

Peter Parker, a former transport planner who crunched the numbers for his Melbourne on Transit blog, said the Craigieburn line had the biggest frequency issues given its high patronage.

Injections of government funding for transport in recent decades haven’t yet redressed the imbalance in service frequency at different ends of the city.

“I can look at timetables going back to the 1990s and there are huge improvements for Frankston line, which goes through marginal seats, but not so much in the north and west,” he said.

Parker said Melbourne train services dropped off dramatically outside peak hours, particularly with 30-40 minute waits each evening, and on Sunday mornings as trains sat idle. He pointed out that Penrith station in Sydney’s outer west had far more frequent services than similar outer suburbs in Melbourne.

“We’re pretty well set up with infrastructure now. We just don’t use it,” he said.

“Melbourne bills itself as a livable city with all these major events. A lot of them are on weekends, and a lot of them require big numbers of people to go to temporary jobs to help run these events. But the train services have certainly not kept up.”

Transport Minister Gabrielle Williams said on Wednesday that long off-peak waits on north-west Melbourne lines would be addressed, but commuters would have to wait for a network timetable revamp for the Metro Tunnel, scheduled to open later this year.

In January, The Age reported the $15 billion tunnel’s full benefits may not be realised because related network upgrades – such as a turn-back on the Upfield line at Gowrie – had been cut to rein in the project’s ballooning budget.

On Wednesday, the Herald Sun reported up to 33 fewer trains would run each peak hour when the tunnel opens compared to what was touted in a 2016 business case.

The peak period trains planned for the Sandringham line would be halved from 16 to 8 per hour while Craigieburn services would drop from 16 to 10, the newspaper said.

In response, Williams said the Metro Tunnel timetable was still being developed and framed the nine-kilometre underground line from Kensington to South Yarra as a “foundational project” that wider network enhancements would later add to, so services would be boosted further.

“You don’t build the second storey of a house before you build the first storey,” she said.

Premier Jacinta Allan inspects a Metro Tunnel project site in March.Credit: AAP

However, the Metro Tunnel’s business case included wider network upgrades – like a turn-back and platform extension at Essendon – and declared they “need to be completed to coincide with completion of the tunnel and stations works”.

A turn-back is a section of track that allows a train to change direction without having to travel to the end of the line, so more trains can run to inner-Melbourne stations with high passenger demand.

Williams said the Metro Tunnel would improve service frequency across the network as a Sunbury-to-Dandenong line would operate via five new inner-city underground stations, freeing up capacity in the City Loop for other lines.

But the opposition spokesman for major projects, Evan Mulholland, said the failure to deliver the related network upgrades showed Labor had “neglected” the northern and western suburbs that would benefit from them.

“The Allan government cannot manage money,” Mulholland said. “This is Jacinta Allan’s signature infrastructure project, and it has turned into a monumental stuff-up that fails to provide the benefits where it’s needed.”

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