The good news is they’re doing consultation and planning for accessible tram stops along route 82.
Unsurprisingly they’re avoiding any stops on Ballarat Road, which is a traffic sewer (with the current eastbound stop being a real death trap).
The scale on the map is a little funny, and the precise locations seem to be part of the consultation, but it does appear they’d reduce the number of stops along Gordon Street from 4 to 3. This means a fairly lengthy gap of about 500 metres between River Street and Edgewater Boulevard. I wonder how the locals feel about that?
The bad news isโฆ well, read the small print – highlighted. No construction funding.
Given they are now well past the 31st December 2022 legal deadline to make all tram stops accessible, and only about 30% are so far, you’d hope they’d be funding this for construction as soon as the designs are ready.
Building platform stops in this area soon is especially important as the new Footscray hospital opens in 2025, and low-floor G-class trams are also expected in service in 2025, starting with this route and others in the area.
Anyway, if you’re a local, you can send in your feedback by the 18th August.
10 replies on “Tram platform stops: good news and bad news”
For Edgewater Bvd option A is even further away from River St it also blocks driveways to the shops, option B is the way to go, Gordon and Ballarat stop needs the track re located to use the slip lane to turn left into Ballarat Rd
re organising the 406 to be rid of route 223 have the 406 as a high frequency route every 10 minutes Yarraville via (Gammon St) to Footscray & VU then (Rosamond Rd) Highpoint then to Keilor East & and re route the 409 to travel down Mitchell st and Hampstead (old 406) to Highpoint then continue to Keilor East, join (407) and renumber 409 as 407 Yarraville to Keilor East
No funding = not going to happen
Daniel,
They are also doing route 86, but neither is funded so could be years away.
500 metres is a very typical stop spacing on tramways nowadays. When you think of it, it’s only max 250 metres walk along the line to the nearest.
Why canโt you put an accessible tram stop at St Kilda junction as 2 low floor trams 16& 5 low floor trams run through that stop 30 makes it alot easier to connect with buses & connecting to st kilda routes
@TonyP, for new tramways yes perhaps about 500 metres is typical. But not for this route. Existing platform stops along River St to the north are about 250-300m apart. The planned stops further south along Gordon St are about 300m apart.
It might be max 250m once you’re on Gordon St (where the tram runs). Not so if you’re also having to walk to Gordon St… though I note in this specific location that’s not going to be very far due to the layout of the streets to the east, and to the west of Gordon St people can easily go to a stop along River St.
Removal of the Owen St stop would be more of a problem.
@Jay, I agree platforms at St Kilda Junction would be a good idea, and I’m surprised it hasn’t been done already.
(“Why don’t you”? I can’t do anything. I don’t run the system.)
Your multiple other comments have been removed. Don’t list out stop ideas one at a time in separate comments. It just ends up looking like spam.
I am kinda disappointed there’s no funding for something like this, but they’re able to fund the WGT and NEL.
@Daniel Bowen. No, I was referring more to stop spacings on legacy tramways in Europe.
I do live in the area, the spacing between River and Edgewater seems about right to me, people in between these two stops still have easy access to the tram walking to River st via Rowe St or to Edgewater
If a extension for route 57 to Keilor East is highly unlikely to ever go ahead I don’t understand why 57 does not continue to Footscray after all its only one stop from where the 82 turns off Raleigh Rd
500 metres is laughable compared to the 109 which has a 7-kilometre gap without an accessible stop and every second tram is an A class to go hand in hand with the A classes duplicating half the route on the 12 (swap the termini of the 12 and 30 already, run E classes down to Victoria Gardens and make Victoria St look less like a war zone).
Legal deadline you say? Where’s old mate IBAC? No doubt getting ready to hand out a fate worse than death when the government is inevitably found guilty, which will force politicians to quit their job in parliament and become insta-CEO of Telstra, Australia Post, Westpac, Qantas or equivalent with zero experience in the field.
With new Footscray Hospital coming online later next year, a project like this, coupled with new high floor trams will really compliment the inevitable increase in public transport. It’s a difficult area to build platform stops so hopefully the consultation isn’t wasted and that funding to progress this occurs. There is also a real opportunity for urban renewal and greening in some pretty rundown areas which is only seeing more densification in already high traffic areas.