Geelong - Melbourne is the best interurban service in the country.

It’s fast, smooth, regular and efficient. Spending millions upon millions for incremental travel time decreases is really neither here nor there. It’s an easy sixty minute ride.

I did Beresfield to Central yesterday and that made the Geelong run seem like the TGV.

Taking the train to Franga, Cranbourne, Macarthur, Penrith, or Calboolture is far more unpleasant than the train to Geelong and there’s no hang wringing over travel times to these places.

For that last poster who has had his post and everyone else, I’d like to you know
Spending hundreds of millions on a new train set that will have a 40km/h increase is a waste

There really Is nowhere In Victoria's Intercity zone where any speed over 200 km/h would be piratical.

A level crossing free section of the Geelong line, would probably be the only section permitted above 160 km/h.

The three (3) lx between Sunshine & Robinsons Road Junction are on the list of the additional 25 lx to go.  Between Manor Junction and  Geelong Station there are only 11  level crossings all currently boom barriered to be grade separated . Realistically with 200kmh running all 10 lx between St Georges Road  North Shore &  Manor Junction would all go, allowing 200kmh running from Robinsons Road Junction to North Shore Station .

What's with the fascination with stopping at North Shore? Is it the Overland? North Shore and Corio combined see half as many passengers as Lara, North Geelong, Geelong, South Geelong, Marshall or Waurn Ponds each.

Run a fast train Colac - Waurn Ponds - Geelong - Lara - Southern Cross. Run a stopping train from Torquay that stops all stations in between. Done. Don't over complicate it.

Taking the train to Franga, Cranbourne, Macarthur, Penrith, or Calboolture is far more unpleasant than the train to Geelong and there’s no hang wringing over travel times to these places.

Oh, well said.

Capacity and reliability are the only serious endgames here. No one is going to be convinced to take the train because it takes 40 minutes instead of 50. Both are easily much faster than peak hour on the Princes Hwy.

Wyndham Vale electrified and quadded - massive capacity boost, improvement to reliability. Realistically, that and a new path through Sunshine will meet Geelong's needs for 20 years. Anything else is frothy pipe dream.

Geelong would be fine as an extended service via MM2/Newport, dumping Altona and useless stations like Aircraft.

There is no reason why it should be elevated above any other suburban location, a mere anachronism of the Vline/Metro split.

Taking the train to ' Franga '   ..............

Haven't heard that word, in 35 yrs, although, that was in reference to a packet, in the glovebox of the HQ Panel Van or in Valvegears case, a 48/215 !

BigShunter.

I agree that the Geelong line should have a two-tiered service. I would propose something like this:

• SRL to Avalon via RRL, Little River
• Avalon to Torquay/Drysdale via Geelong (stopping all stations)
• Waurn Ponds - Geelong, stopping all stations, then Geelong to Melbourne high speed express via Werribee (new express tracks), feeds into Metro 2, terminates at Southern Cross.

This ensures all the current stations are maintained on the line, Geelong gets a metro service, and Melbourne-Geelong finally has a quick express train. Let's not forget that part of the aim of this project is to try and encourage people to move to Geelong. Providing a Metro service on top of that will help to cater for the new demand.

I don't see why passengers in Frankston, Mornington Peninsula, Pakenham, Belgrave, Lilydale, Melton, Sunbury etc. should settle for our current "metro" network just because it's the status quo.

Build a proper two tier service. Make the express trains more expensive. Cut down the stops on the express trains to just major centres.
ie Ringwood-Box Hill-Richmond. Express trains continue to belgrave (stopping all stations between ringwood and belgrave), the stopping trains can continue to lilydale. Passengers heaidng into the city from lilydale change at ringwood.

For the South East:
Run Stopping all station services to Cranbourne via Dandenong and Baxter via Frankston. Run express trains Richmond - Caulfield - Yarraman(no stop) - Dandenong or Baxter, then Baxter trains can run through to stony point, and dandenong trains throught to warragul.

For Geelong, Run express trains Airport-Southern Cross-Lara-Geelong-Waurn Ponds-Colac, and extend the werribee line to Torquay+Clifton Springs. Can short terminate some services at Lara.

For all of those that say Geelong should go via Metro 2, you need to get passengers off the west gate bridge and on to trains

35 minutes to Southerm Cross is the maximum time that we should be aiming for.

@John.Z

These passengers should have better express times too.

Quadding to Camberwell we all know needs to happen, quadding to Box Hill and then triplicating to Ringwood would allow super express services all day. Running 10 min trains to both lilydale and Belgrave with every second service being a super express going Ringwood-Box Hill-Richmond  

Same can be done if Dandenong is quadded with Pakenham and Cranbourne through Metro Tunnel, 10 minute services to both. Every second service can be a super express going Dandenong-(possibly Springvale)- Clayton-Caulfield. And you also have Traralgon, Mornington, Stony Point and Bairnsdale services running express through.

Haven't heard that word, in 35 yrs, although, that was in reference to a packet, in the glovebox of the HQ Panel Van or in Valvegears case, a 48/215 !

Jeez, I wasn't that good; I was only 8 when the 48/215 came out! My first was an FE and, yes, the packet was in there.

Geelong via Metro 2 would be far quicker and more efficient than unnecessarily going via Sunshine. Other than shared tracks with the Werribee line through the Metro 2, it could easily have its own express tracks from Newport to Werribee. I think that it is stupid that we are putting so much strain on the Sunshine-City corridor, where there is a viable alternative for the Geelong line. Geelong, Wyndham Vale, Melton, Ballarat, Bendigo, Sunbury and Airport trains will hardly fit into 3 track pairs, especially if you add Seymour line trains to the mix. Take the Geelong line out of the equation and you have the opportunity to provide more services for Regional Victoria and provide a separated Seymour line and potentially Bendigo line.
Under this proposal, the only shared tracks that V/line would have with metro trains would be Geelong trains through Metro 2, and Bendigo/Seymour/Ballarat trains through the airport line tunnel to Sunshine.

Taking the train to ' Franga '   ..............Travelling Hooker

Haven't heard that word, in 35 yrs, although, that was in reference to a packet, in the glovebox of the HQ Panel Van or in Valvegears case, a 48/215 !


mmmm, I have some very downmarket friends

@Lockie91

With the High Speed Rail To Geelong and Ballarat you would want the new rollingstock to travel at 250km/h not 200km/h. A huge investment in a new fleet for just a 40km/h increase wouldn’t be worth it. However, Geelong passengers want reliability and a service around 40 Minutes which will be done with dedicated tracks into the city. But you’d want this new fleet of regional fast trains to travel at 250m/h. It also means Victoria becomes the leader in Australia for High Speed Rail.

My issue is, you have plenty of stations that need to have a service and a fast train stopping at all of them will slow down the time. Lara, Little River, Corio, North Shore, North Geelong, Geelong, South Geelong, Marshall and Waurn Ponds. Then you have to factor in that Geelong and Werribee passengers want the connection reinstated between those two suburbs and then there is the Torquay line to factor in.

- Torquay Line uses VLocity Trains and Stops all Stations to Southern Cross
- High Speed Geelong Line Stops at Waurn Ponds-Marshall-South Geelong-Geelong then express to Southern Cross
- Winchelsea to Werribee Stops all Stations and runs every hour
- Geelong to Ballarat Line


Or you could have the Geelong and Torquay trains run a mixture of stopping all stations and express using the new fast trains with travel times between 27 and 40 Minutes

Golly Gosh, I do have a giggle when everyone is blinded by the speed as soon as the phrase "High Speed Rail" starts getting thrown around. Capacity gets thrown out the window as long as we can have it fast.

PTVcommuter, you will have noticed that I did use "200km +" that implies that speeds would be more than 200km/h same as this little symbol ">" also means greater than. But I digress,

Geelong proper will need a 10 minute service, its far flung suburbs will not. The new fleet of trains will be able to run at 160km as well as ***Km (dare I use a number) There is no need for different types of fleet to service the Geelong suburbs. Waurn Ponds to Geelong is 14 minutes SAS or 11 minutes Express. This will be improved with the impending track upgrades. Geelong to Footscray is 59 minutes express. Which is not overly different to the SAS. The Majority of time savings are between the Suburban Boundary (Little River) and Southern Cross. If you peruse the current timetable the Geelong suburbs have a scattered 20/30 minute service, this will be the same once HSR is complete. Trains will not be running at 200Km++++ through the suburbs.

So you will have a mix of services from Waurn Ponds/Geelong stopping at one or two of the suburban stations adding at most 5 minutes to the running time. The express to Southern Cross which is doable in 20 - 30 minutes. So a trip from Waurn Ponds roughly 35 - 45 minutes. Greatly improved in the 65 minute crawl to Southern Cross they now have. (Remember not every service will run express) With the benefits of more Capacity as RRL has been taken out of the mix. An 8/10 car High Speed train with 600 - 800 seats every ten Minutes to Geelong is gold plated compared to what is on offer now.

Don't get hung up on the speed and travel times to the compromise of capacity. The aim of PT is to move as many people as quickly as possible not just the select few.

And lastly this bull about reinstating the Werribee connection. It won't happen. Mark my words Regional Services will NEVER run on the Werribee line again. NEVER. The numbers were crunched when RRL was planned, a hand full of people out of the thousands that used the service everyday. Bus connections were put in place, with the ultimate plan to run services threw to Wyndham Vale which is now on the cards in the next few years. The minority can change at WV without greatly inconveniencing the majority.

Plus Dan wants Sunshine to become a major hub for regional rail to connect with the airport line, so the Geelong line will not deviate from Sunshine most likely

Geelong via Metro 2 would be far quicker and more efficient than unnecessarily going via Sunshine. Other than shared tracks with the Werribee line through the Metro 2, it could easily have its own express tracks from Newport to Werribee. I think that it is stupid that we are putting so much strain on the Sunshine-City corridor, where there is a viable alternative for the Geelong line. Geelong, Wyndham Vale, Melton, Ballarat, Bendigo, Sunbury and Airport trains will hardly fit into 3 track pairs, especially if you add Seymour line trains to the mix. Take the Geelong line out of the equation and you have the opportunity to provide more services for Regional Victoria and provide a separated Seymour line and potentially Bendigo line.
Under this proposal, the only shared tracks that V/line would have with metro trains would be Geelong trains through Metro 2, and Bendigo/Seymour/Ballarat trains through the airport line tunnel to Sunshine.

HAHAHAHA,

Let's crunch the numbers once again.

Geelong via MM2 would not be quicker and would triple the cost of what is on the table now, RRL was designed to have 2 track pairs. The Werribee line was not. Above ground you are talking about a complete rebuild of every station, overpass, underpass, bridge and property acquisition. Tunnel, just forget it. A track pair with 6 - 10 TPH does not outweigh the Billion dollar costs of redesigning the western suburbs. Even more so you have High Speed from Geelong that will get stuck behind SAS Metro Services in MM2.

This is the same problem they had with MARL all the money it would take to have a bloody airport train every ten minutes. But the cleaver little bean counters figured out they could justify the cost if they had 30TPH over the 6TPH. HCS allows for a theoretical of 32/34 TPH. Operational around 24 - 32TPH. So some more numbers.

The MARL tunnel will have the same capacity as MM1 30TPH (trains every 2 minuets)

MM1
-Sunbury & Melton via MM1 trains every 4 minutes to each line. (30TPH)
-Bendigo is still running via Sunbury at this stage. But that could change deepening on what the MARL biz case looks like. That eats the last remaining paths on the Sunbury line. 20 minute service (3TPH)

RRL (Sunshine to SCS)
-Wyndham Vale services all to Sunshine every 5 minutes (12TPH) leaves room for Melton services if need be.

MARL
-Geelong every 10 minutes (6TPH)
-Ballarat every 10 minutes (6TPH)
-Airport every 10 minutes (6TPH)
Thats 18 TPH, less than the city loop currently handles.
If Bendigo and Seymour are included 20 minute service each, a further 6TPH
24TPH which is doable with conventional line side signalling, we haven't even got into HCS territory yet.
You could very easily run trains at 160km/h in MARL it will be all of a few minutes from Sunshine to SCS.

Under any proposal there will be no track sharing, those days are well and truly over. Independent and segregated lines. I can see the pitch folks now once we start hearing of Vline train faults in MM2 delaying hundreds of thousands of Metro commuters. It is the basic premise of Metro Lines. Faults on one line do not cascade to other parts of the network. That is why the Government spent 3 Billion on RRL, it is why the government is spending 11 Billion on MM1, it is why plans to segregate RRL are underway and it is why MARL will further segregate lines. The days of one train taking you were you want to go are over. Melbournians will need to get use to changing trains to complete their journey just as those in other major cities do.

For all of those that say Geelong should go via Metro 2, you need to get passengers off the west gate bridge and on to trains

35 minutes to Southerm Cross is the maximum time that we should be aiming for.

People travel via road because of the convenience of their car at each end of their trip.

All Geelong needs Is a regular scheduled rail passenger service that Is faster than an off peak road journey (between the 2 Cities)
Talk of 30, 32, 35, etc minute journey times Is just a waste of money.

Better off spending money on better public transport links at the Geelong end of the journey.

Geelong via Metro 2 would be far quicker and more efficient than unnecessarily going via Sunshine. Other than shared tracks with the Werribee line through the Metro 2, it could easily have its own express tracks from Newport to Werribee. I think that it is stupid that we are putting so much strain on the Sunshine-City corridor, where there is a viable alternative for the Geelong line. Geelong, Wyndham Vale, Melton, Ballarat, Bendigo, Sunbury and Airport trains will hardly fit into 3 track pairs, especially if you add Seymour line trains to the mix. Take the Geelong line out of the equation and you have the opportunity to provide more services for Regional Victoria and provide a separated Seymour line and potentially Bendigo line.
Under this proposal, the only shared tracks that V/line would have with metro trains would be Geelong trains through Metro 2, and Bendigo/Seymour/Ballarat trains through the airport line tunnel to Sunshine.

HAHAHAHA,

Let's crunch the numbers once again.

Geelong via MM2 would not be quicker and would triple the cost of what is on the table now, RRL was designed to have 2 track pairs. The Werribee line was not. Above ground you are talking about a complete rebuild of every station, overpass, underpass, bridge and property acquisition. Tunnel, just forget it. A track pair with 6 - 10 TPH does not outweigh the Billion dollar costs of redesigning the western suburbs. Even more so you have High Speed from Geelong that will get stuck behind SAS Metro Services in MM2.

This is the same problem they had with MARL all the money it would take to have a bloody airport train every ten minutes. But the cleaver little bean counters figured out they could justify the cost if they had 30TPH over the 6TPH. HCS allows for a theoretical of 32/34 TPH. Operational around 24 - 32TPH. So some more numbers.

The MARL tunnel will have the same capacity as MM1 30TPH (trains every 2 minuets)

MM1
-Sunbury & Melton via MM1 trains every 4 minutes to each line. (30TPH)
-Bendigo is still running via Sunbury at this stage. But that could change deepening on what the MARL biz case looks like. That eats the last remaining paths on the Sunbury line. 20 minute service (3TPH)

RRL (Sunshine to SCS)
-Wyndham Vale services all to Sunshine every 5 minutes (12TPH) leaves room for Melton services if need be.

MARL
-Geelong every 10 minutes (6TPH)
-Ballarat every 10 minutes (6TPH)
-Airport every 10 minutes (6TPH)
Thats 18 TPH, less than the city loop currently handles.
If Bendigo and Seymour are included 20 minute service each, a further 6TPH
24TPH which is doable with conventional line side signalling, we haven't even got into HCS territory yet.
You could very easily run trains at 160km/h in MARL it will be all of a few minutes from Sunshine to SCS.

Under any proposal there will be no track sharing, those days are well and truly over. Independent and segregated lines. I can see the pitch folks now once we start hearing of Vline train faults in MM2 delaying hundreds of thousands of Metro commuters. It is the basic premise of Metro Lines. Faults on one line do not cascade to other parts of the network. That is why the Government spent 3 Billion on RRL, it is why the government is spending 11 Billion on MM1, it is why plans to segregate RRL are underway and it is why MARL will further segregate lines. The days of one train taking you were you want to go are over. Melbournians will need to get use to changing trains to complete their journey just as those in other major cities do.

yawn...…………………………...

People seem to live in a fantasy land where money grows on trees... sure explains the support for the suburban loop.

With a direct link to the city from Newport, there would only be six stops between Southern Cross and Werribee (assuming two new stations in Fishermans Bend with Aircraft dumped), of which only the outer three would be of limited interest from Geelong travellers.

There is no reason one could not operate Geelong services as an extension of stoppers from Werribee, achieving the best use of infrastructure to provide the necessary capacity at an achievable cost whilst still offering an acceptable journey time.

Similarly with Melton/Ballarat, we cannot afford to construct lines that will sit barely used so that Vline passengers can have a gold-plated service that they pay peanuts for.

Quadding to Camberwell we all know needs to happen, quadding to Box Hill and then triplicating to Ringwood would allow super express services all day. Running 10 min trains to both lilydale and Belgrave with every second service being a super express going Ringwood-Box Hill-Richmond  

That's not an argument - we can't afford such infrastructure to satisfy a few hill folk in Tecoma.

If you want faster journey times ditch useless stations like East Camberwell, Chatham and Mont Albert.

People seem to live in a fantasy land where money grows on trees... sure explains the support for the suburban loop.

That's not an argument - we can't afford such infrastructure to satisfy a few hill folk in Tecoma.

If you want faster journey times ditch useless stations like East Camberwell, Chatham and Mont Albert.

Why are you ok with a gold plated service for Dandenong and Frankston, but not Geelong?

The sooner Melbourne has a Paris RER style express network the better. Bring the service up to standard, don't drag it down to the lowest denominator.

People seem to live in a fantasy land where money grows on trees... sure explains the support for the suburban loop. With a direct link to the city from Newport, there would only be six stops between Southern Cross and Werribee (assuming two new stations in Fishermans Bend with Aircraft dumped), of which only the outer three would be of limited interest from Geelong travellers. There is no reason one could not operate Geelong services as an extension of stoppers from Werribee, achieving the best use of infrastructure to provide the necessary capacity at an achievable cost whilst still offering an acceptable journey time. Similarly with Melton/Ballarat, we cannot afford to construct lines that will sit barely used so that Vline passengers can have a gold-plated service that they pay peanuts for.

Quadding to Camberwell we all know needs to happen, quadding to Box Hill and then triplicating to Ringwood would allow super express services all day. Running 10 min trains to both lilydale and Belgrave with every second service being a super express going Ringwood-Box Hill-Richmond

That's not an argument - we can't afford such infrastructure to satisfy a few hill folk in Tecoma. If you want faster journey times ditch useless stations like East Camberwell, Chatham and Mont Albert.

The days of closing stations are over. Although some might have little use at the moment, it would be political suicide to do so. The whole point of this discussion is to provide an proper alternative to the freeway for commuters to Melbourne and Geelong. We want more people to live in Geelong, and to facilitate this, we need a decent express train to Melbourne. There is plenty of space beyond Newport on the Werribee line, other than perhaps in Werribee itself. Putting in an extra two tracks to accommodate trains at least every 10 minutes to Geelong is justifiable.

The common denominator between SRL and the Geelong High Speed Rail projects is population. The government is seriously concerned about the great increase to Melbourne's population. SRL is designed to remove the unnecessary pressure on the CBD for cross-city journeys. Yes, it comes at a high price, but the consequence of not building it is a huge increase in congestion over the next few years. Similarly, High Speed Rail is one of many ploys to develop Geelong as a genuine second city in Victoria. While it will eventually likely be connected to Melbourne via suburbia, it has plenty of room to expand.

I think that the government has finally come to the realisation that building new freeways is unsustainable. Sure, they are building the Western Distributor and North-East link, which are a horrific waste of money, but Transurban are the de facto heads of transport in Victoria, and have to be kept happy. The reality is that we cannot continue to take an old, outdated approach to dealing with congestion. We have the money to build SRL. It'll be finished in 2050. That's 25 years of $2 billion, which is surprisingly affordable. Revenue for the Victorian Government is almost at $70 billion. Spending a even a twentieth of that on transport infrastructure a year is doable to allow for SRL.

I think that the government has finally come to the realisation that building new freeways is unsustainable. Sure, they are building the Western Distributor and North-East link, which are a horrific waste of money, but Transurban are the de facto heads of transport in Victoria, and have to be kept happy. The reality is that we cannot continue to take an old, outdated approach to dealing with congestion. We have the money to build SRL. It'll be finished in 2050. That's 25 years of $2 billion, which is surprisingly affordable. Revenue for the Victorian Government is almost at $70 billion. Spending a even a twentieth of that on transport infrastructure a year is doable to allow for SRL.

Western Distributor is very necessary due to Westgate bridge being overloaded every day and the North-East link is basically a dot joining exercise which is common sense and had to happen eventually.

Personally I have no concerns about Transurban or tolls because I travel by PT virtually everywhere in Melbourne.

Mike.

I think that the government has finally come to the realisation that building new freeways is unsustainable.

I’d be expecting announcements for the Outer Metropolitan Ring Road, Westall Rd Extension, Mornington Freeway Extension To Rye and a third runway for Tullamarine in the next 4 years.

As for West Gate Tunnel, that’s being funded by the private consortium. With 1.75 Billion of Federal money going towards the North East Link, there may even 3 Billion more getting chipped in from the money put aside for the East West Link.

Why are you ok with a gold plated service for Dandenong and Frankston, but not Geelong? The sooner Melbourne has a Paris RER style express network the better. Bring the service up to standard, don't drag it down to the lowest denominator.

We want to be taking Geelong people off cars and into trains.
A 30-35 minute service will do that, a 40-45 Minute service will still have many people travelling over the west gate

What's with the fascination with stopping at North Shore? Is it the Overland? North Shore and Corio combined see half as many passengers as Lara, North Geelong, Geelong, South Geelong, Marshall or Waurn Ponds each.

Run a fast train Colac - Waurn Ponds - Geelong - Lara - Southern Cross. Run a stopping train from Torquay that stops all stations in between. Done. Don't over complicate it.

North Shore has a lot more passengers than Colac.

I sincerely doubt the OMR will be started in the next decade. In my view, the incredibly positive reaction to the SRL will have confirmed to the government that the public attitude has swung firmly away from road infrastructure. As Mike said, I don’t think we will see any major road infrastructure added to the WGT and NEL between now and 2026 (because we have to be realistic - it will take an almost unprecedented turn of events to give us a Lib Government in 2022, especially if federal Labor can hang around until then).

It’s more plausible that we will see a business case for the WIFT (due this year) that recommends the WIGL as the best solution for freight from the south-west onto Inland Rail. The Port of Melbourne’s rail access strategy is also due this year and my guess is they’ll be willing to stump up some big bikkies for freight rail. Even the road-heavy Delivering the Goods plan released last year defers the OMR until the mid-2030s.

OMR = Outer Metro Ring Road
WGT = West Gate Tunnel
NEL = North East Link
WIFT = Western Interstate Freight Terminal
WIGL = Western Independent Goods Line (see other thread on the subject)