While we’re all getting used to the Metro Tunnel, the State Government is pushing ahead with the suburban rail loop, with a big $6.7b contract announced in December to provide driverless trains, associated signalling and control systems and platform screen doors, and recent social media updates about Tunnel Boring Machines arriving and preparing for work.
This week, the Federal body Infrastructure Australia put the project on their priority list, which paves the way for the Federal Government to give it funding.
The line’s route seems to be pretty much what State Labor took to the 2018 state election.
But there’s one key thing that was missing then and still seems to be missing now, and that is provision for future additional stations.
This is particularly important between Southland (Cheltenham) and Clayton, with a long distance between those two stations.
You can see from the map above that the distances are far longer than on the existing rail network.
As the crow flies it’s about 7km, which would make it the fourth longest distance between stations (based on the excellent list by Phillip Mallis.)
In terms of track length, this section of the actual SRL route is more like 9km long, ranking it second longest. All the others in the top ten (apart from Newport to Laverton, which arguably should be discounted as it’s an express bypass route) are in the outer suburbs, on Melbourne’s fringe.
I’m not suggesting they should add lots of stops and compromise the quick cross-suburban trip. Nor am I suggesting they build an intermediate stop right now. They seem very focussed on containing costs (which is probably why the promise of paid area interchange at all connecting Metro stations has gone out the window).
But they should be including provision for future extra stations.
For an underground railway, including provision is cheap to do during construction, but near impossible to do later, as it requires a section of tunnel to be built flat and straight, with extra space that can be used later to build a station.
Trying to do it later would not just close the line for months or years, it would be prohibitively expensive.
Locking these options out forever would be a huge missed opportunity. The government claims SRL is “More transport, more homes, more jobs” – so surely allowing for additional future development precincts should be an no-brainer.
One obvious spot for an extra station would be in the Warrigal Road area. It’s an area of mostly low density light industrial, ripe for urban renewal if it has good transport links.
This point has been made to the State Government repeatedly over the years – I assume by others as well as me.
But looking at the plans, it appears that the only provision for a potential additional station is in Heatherton near the stabling yard, alongside Kingston Road.
This is a location which is also in a green wedge (putting the depot here is part of what makes the whole project controversial for locals) and so is probably not a great spot for large scale housing development.
The plans also show a straight section near Warrigal Road, and there’s a long section parallel to Clayton Road which is straight, but it’s not clear if either of these are designed to be level, and being made suitable for future stations.
If Government isn’t planning for future stations now, they’re locking out options for the future. And that really would be short-sighted.
You can view the exact route in the SRL East EES: Surface and Tunnel Plans document
12 replies on “SRL: Provision for extra stops”
Is there provision for the route to continue from Cheltenham towards Sandringham?
Daniel, I’d urge you to study closely the planning objectives for suburbs along the line, as well as the Sydney experience. Firstly, automated underground metros aren’t cheap to build (though compensate later by being much cheaper and more reliable to operate) and underground stations are incredibly expensive. They have to get it right the first time, because it costs billions and massive inconvenience from prolonged line closure to retrofit a station. It’s basically out of the question.
What are the planning objectives around the stations? To justify the line, there needs to be major high density development around the stations (or a university, hospital and/or commercial precinct with further development). The Warrigal/Kingston Rd area looks to be basically industrial, with low density residential around it – costly and difficult to redevelop, not to mention industrial areas being important for the city economy and employment. Industrial areas don’t generate the mass to justify an underground station, being low density and road-based (out of necessity). In Sydney, Silverwater industrial area is being bypassed by Metro West for those reasons.
You might have seen the political shenanigans in Sydney where a new government tried to alter Metro West and found that the planners were right in the first place – so no result at the cost of extra billions and two years’ delay. You have to trust the planners and engineers to get it right in the first place. Sydney’s system also has long gaps (as do some similar newer metros overseas) – about 6 km Epping to Cherrybrook, about 7 km Olympic Park to Parramatta and on Metro Western Sydney, the first stage of a cross-suburban line like the SRL, gaps up to 6 km.
I know (approx) 9 rail km gap on SRL sounds long, but if there’s nothing there to justify a station, don’t build a station. Stations should be built according to where they’re needed as part of overall city planning, not because the gap looks too great on a map. It’s a long cross-suburban line that needs a quick journey time. It benefits from some stop-free stretches to get its legs. Journey time is extremely important for commuters, it’s a major region for Sydney Metro’s extraordinary popularity.
So to cut my long blather short, if you want extra stations, the time for them is now while it’s being built and that’s going to be very difficult considering the years of planning, design and EIS process that leads up to construction. I think your government won’t do that, they want it now.
The Clayton South area is surprisingly busy with a mix of Industrial and housing, but isn’t really walking distance from Clayton or Westall on a regular basis.
The amount of traffic moving up and down the freeway from the Frankston area to Clayton every morning and afternoon shows there is demand there.
I think PTV planning for additional stations would be amazing. though given how most of the stations only have planning for a single entrance (or in some cases 2 entrances side right next to each other) even when some changes would make mode switching or interconnection much easier.
Glen waverly for example is on the other side of the station to the bus interchange and is going to be great crossing between them.
While the Deakin option has at least got a bridge over the road the main monash plan has the entrances on the other side of unsignaled roundabouts
Clayton has an underground station box that seems to go in under the elevated rail (seriously clayton station looks awesome and for a road project skyrail did manage to defeat the “platforms need rain” motto of the rest of ptv stations) but the entrances are on the north side of carinish road. At least they did put one entrance on either side of the major road.
Southland is probably the worst offender. Single entrance between highway and train line.
From the west you have piddily little “totally a footpath and not just left over space” under the bay road bridge.
East you have Nepean highway and the 2 service roads 12 lanes to cross to get to the station with the wonderfully short signal timing :\ Probably mildly safer and only a little slower to go via the shopping centre. Just dodge all the cars in the carpark and you make it to the single accessibility concession the bridge over bay road.
Also does southland not even have entrances to the west? you have to dodge cars just to make it there?
Tony P makes a good point, but, sometimes a stations presence can also drive redevelopment of an area, may have to wait some decades for it to happen thou. Barcelona is doing it now with line L10S in La Zona Franca, which was considered by many a huge waste of money building a line into what is an industrial area. And London did the same with the DLR in the early ‘80s, which many thought was mad, parts were still a wasteland well into the ‘90s, and if you want to see what that area was like back then, watch the punk film Jubilee which was filmed there.
But long-term thinking about future stations, decades into the future, with Melbourne’s ever growing population, would be sensible when planning infrastructure products that will still be in use a century from now.
Even with a few extra stations, there will still be a need for parallel surface transport routes for last km connectivity. I suspect for the cost of just one or two extra underground stations you could build a busway paralleling/feeding most of the line, which would be of immense use while also helping establish travel patterns.
It would be nice to see a bit more of an investment to build the new stations properly now to save money in the future, paid-area (or at least indoors/sans road crossings… ?) interchanges should be a must for all of the stations.
What concerns me more is that the Monash station location is easily a 15 minute walk from campus. Seems rather unfortunate.
Adding stations along the route between Cheltenham and Clayton provides an opportunity to capture the value of land use changes made possible by the new stops.
The current approach of placing stations at all ready well developed locations is flawed from this perspective – there will be little if any value uplift.
Land around the stations could easily be rezoned to create new suburbs. That some of this land is within the green wedge is immaterial as it has little environmental value and could be put to much better use.
The following is relevant on this point.
https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/the-starfish-city-how-melbourne-s-shape-is-pushing-young-workers-out-20260315-p5oal5.html
Routing the tunnel via Clarinda or Dingley Village would have been options as well.
I don’t think additional stations should be included in the project. We should prioritise how planned stations connect with existing stations and the local area, such as fast paid connections, bike infrastructure, bus route planning to name a few.
I don’t think a station at the Heatherton site is the right option at this stage, we should prioritise the existing busy areas that have much greater development potential. The Heatherton station would sit between land that can’t be developed. Residential areas around that site could be better served by a high frequency bus.
Stage 1 SRL should have ended at Doncaster, not Box Hill. In peak it can take nearly twenty minutes to get from Box Hill Central to Westfield Doncaster by any form of rubber-tyred vehicle and another ten minutes to Macedon Square just around the corner. Red lights absolutely everywhere, never mind the buses themselves sitting idle at Doncaster for up to ten minutes which I didn’t even think of until now. Two minutes by train if it existed.
As for Glen Waverley (@Kevin), the current station and bus interchange both need to be nuked from orbit and rebuilt from scratch, with entrances at both ends of the station and direct subway access between the SRL, Metro and bus stations. Glen Waverley is one of the worst semi-major public transport interchanges on the entire suburban network and the station precinct is a complete eyesore.
Completely agree with Heihachi_73. I was surprised when SRL was first announced that Doncaster was not the northern-most stop for SRL East. Government could then have legitimately claimed to have delivered heavy rail to Doncaster after decades of promises.
Glen Waverley’s plan is a missed opportunity for a passenger-friendly interchange.
It is so disappointing to see Melbourne’s project designed at the maximum possible cost with minimum possible future potential for additions or changes. I visited Paris three years ago and they had extended a Metro line for a few km to add extra stations and make things easier (i.e. from ‘pretty easy’ to ‘amazingly easy and convenient’) for many thousands of people. They just trenched it into the ground under roads and then put the roads back on top.
This is what should happen here! We have a grid network of roads. It doesn’t end the world if we shut one of these roads for an extended period. There are drains and cables under them and those are always an excuse for those who say No, but there are drains and cables under every city and the other cities manage this. Build these railways close to the surface and underneath the roads!