In this post from 2009, I compared the number of peak hour trains at Glen Huntly (then one of my usual stations) in 1997 vs 2009.
I thought it would be worth revisiting and updating, especially since the station has been rebuilt and the crossing removed.
More trains?
Here’s morning peak:
| 1997 | 7:13 | 7:24 | 7:34 | 7:49 | 7:58 | 8:06 | 8:20 | 8:25 | 8:37 | 8:52 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2009 | 7:11 | 7:20 | 7:31 | 7:47 | 7:56 | 8:05 | 8:21Â | 8:36 | 8:52 | ||||
| 2024 | 7:06 | 7:16 | 7:26 | 7:35 | 7:44 | 7:53 | 8:03 | 8:12 | 8:21 | 8:29 | 8:39 | 8:49 | 8:55 |
So from 7am-9am, four more trains than the late-1990s; a 44% increase, with a more even frequency. I’d definitely call that progress.
That hasn’t come about due to this specific crossing removal, though steady removal of many crossings means the increase in services doesn’t impact other transport modes around stations.
Perhaps just as important as peak, trains outside peak have improved to every 10 minutes for most of the day, and every 20 in the evenings – better than most other lines.
It’s the all day frequency that helps people get around at all times of day, rather than just in peak hour – especially important now that many people are working from home.
Good frequency means people can travel at a time that’s convenient to them, helping making it a better alternative to driving. The question is: when will we see this on all the other lines on the Metro network?
Running times
In 2017 I noted that the Glen Huntly tram/train level crossing meant trains ran so slowly they were barely faster than walking speed.
Given the crossing is now gone, have the running times improved between Glen Huntly and Caulfield?
| Glen Huntly to Caulfield – minutes | Inbound (“Up”) | Outbound (“Down”) |
| 1997 | 3-4* | 3-4* |
| 2009 | 4 | 3-4* |
| 2021 | 4 | 3 |
| 2024 | 4 | 3 |
Hmm. What about express trains?
| Cheltenham to Caulfield – minutes | Inbound (“Up”) | Outbound (“Down”) |
| 1997 | 12 | 11 |
| 2009 | 12 | 11 |
| 2021 | 12 | 13 |
| 2024 | 12 | 13 |
With the crossing gone, times are… the same as before.
Well that’s not good. What is affecting train speeds? Track congestion? Southland station (opened 2017)?
The operating pattern is very similar to that in the 90s, though the peak frequency (stoppers and expresses every 10 minutes) is slightly higher.
Padding the timetable?
I timed a bunch of trips (from doors unlocked at Glen Huntly to doors unlocked at Caulfield, and vice versa).
- Some inbound times were under 3 minutes, especially outside peak times, but most peak journeys were a bit over 3 minutes. (At these times, another train is more likely to be just in front.)
- Most outbound times were under 3 minutes. A few were over.
Maybe there’s a case for the longer inbound timing, but there also seems to be an element of timetable padding (noting that the public timetable only goes to one minute intervals).
How much is too much? The one outbound express I’ve caught since the crossing removal zoomed through Glen Huntly, but seemed to wait ages at Cheltenham.
And this stopper had to wait a minute at McKinnon:
If trains haven’t got faster, despite better infrastructure, has punctuality improved? Yes. A quick and dirty graph shows the overall trend since 2022 is upwards.
(Why was punctuality so good in June and July 2023? Because the busiest section of the line was closed for most of that time to complete the project… and they don’t publish on-time data for replacement buses!)
So, since August 2023 (the month after the new station opened) monthly punctuality hasn’t fallen below 90%. Definitely an improvement there.
Still, it’s not a great look when a crossing that limited train speeds to 20-30 km/h has been removed at a cost of around half a billion dollars, but the trains are not actually timed to run any faster. Is it time to review and rewrite the timetable?
- I’ve used the new spelling of Glen Huntly here even when talking about the past. Pedants like me are aware that it changed from one word to two in 2023.
- The project removed a tram/train crossing. Train performance improved… I don’t know if there’s also been an improvement in tram performance or travel time for route 67; I haven’t looked at those the numbers yet.
- There’s some great data sets available these days (including some related to patronage, but are not listed on PTV’s page). But I don’t understand why PTV punctuality data is tied up in Power BI, where it’s difficult to export it for analysis. (But maybe I need to read up on how to properly use Power BI.)
- Speaking of new and rebuilt stations, back in August I participated in a good discussion on ABC radio about railway stations. You can listen here.
6 replies on “More frequent? Faster?”
“trains outside peak have improved to every 10 minutes … â better than most other lines.”
Daniel, do you know why Dandenong line was given 10 min trains and most other lines don’t? It’s great to be able to catch a Dandenong train and not worry about the timetable.
@Roger It made sense given that Dandenong is the busiest line on the network (having overtaken Ringwood in the 2000s). Also if you were going to take Frankstons out of the Loop a Dandenong at the same frequency would permit consistent interchange.
On weekends Ringwood, Dandenong and Frankston got 10 min frequencies. It’s a pity that weekday for Ringwood hasn’t caught up, with they still having a lot of complex peak stopping patterns. And the neglected north has basically got nothing service-wise so the gaps between it and the better served south-east have widened.
Glen Iris to Gardiner is timetabled for 2 minutes on weekdays, but 3 minutes on weekends. It’s under 1km and can be done in about a minute. The tram square at Gardiner was removed nearly 9 years ago.
Kooyong – Heyington – Burnley is 2/3 minutes on weekdays but 3/2 minutes on weekends; this means if the driver strictly follows the timetable, there’s about a minute of unnecessary dwell time at Heyington and about a minute late departure at Burnley.
Outbound late night Glen Waverley trains are timetabled to take 11 minutes from Flinders St to Richmond via the loop on weeknights, but 13 minutes on weekends. It should be 12 minutes; an 11 minute run is not going to happen without a <10 second dwell time at each station, and a 13 minute run means sometimes trains leave Parliament about a minute early.
I'm sure there's countless other examples on other lines.
I think there waiting for the metro tunnel to come in and then they’ll redo the timetables network wide as the networks so interlinked on top of all the flat junctions
I use Power BI for work, it looks like they’ve not allowed end users to export the data displayed in the app. This is a pretty simple setting change on their end.
Same thing at Union too. The Belgrave/Lilydale timetable still expects trains to stop at Surrey Hills and Mont Albert instead of having one station in between them, so instead of rewriting the timetable and making things faster the train if forced to wait an extra minute or two at Box Hill or Chatham depending on direction, or travel at 40 km/h all the way so it doesn’t end up more than a minute ahead of schedule.
More frequent? Nope, still every 30 minutes off-peak (east of Ringwood) and at night. Nope, still exactly the same timetable despite having one less station to stop at.
Faster? Nope, local lines on the triple track are still restricted to a lousy 65 km/h on the straights instead of 80 km/h (centre track). Camberwell is still a goat track and had its tracks last looked at in the 1970s, and has a speed limit of just above walking speed. A Hitachi train split the points and derailed at the up end of Camberwell twenty or so years ago but that isn’t even the worst bit of track (the down end is; all three tracks are equally rough as evidenced by the sheer amount of noise the track makes as well as the train jolting in all directions, never mind an X’Trapolis being a jumping castle on wheels before it even hits those tracks).
Also, Frankston’s Caulfield to Cheltenham express is like a cruise missile compared to the glorified tram ride between Richmond, Camberwell and Box Hill, never mind the worthless mini-expresses that stop all stations after only Camberwell (and is made even worse when the “express” also stops at Glenferrie).