Future Public Transport Ideas

The Northern Light Rail link

Fri, 19/06/2015 - 00:00 Alastair Taylor
For many a year now there's been talk of a rail link to Melbourne Airport with the Albion corridor named as the preferred alignment. While an airport heavy rail link via the preferred corridor would serve the Airport, Sunshine, the city centre and most parts of the metropolitan area in the East and South via a change of trains in the city, it doesn't do much for people living in the north and working at the airport, let alone cater for...

Turning the East West Road Link into a rail link

Fri, 29/05/2015 - 00:00 Alastair Taylor
The words East West Link are now synonymous with the lacklustre freeway project whose first stage was set to connect the Eastern Freeway with the Tullamarine Freeway. It took a state election and new government on Spring Street to expose the project as one propped up by shaky economic benefits. The new State Government has cancelled the contracts for the East West Road Link and conducted a blitzkrieg of announcements relating to public transport...

New rail technology: Alstom's Axonis light metro

Fri, 22/05/2015 - 00:00 Alastair Taylor
Railways are the freeways of the public transport world. They consume enormous amounts of capital during design and construction phases and require regular maintenance once operational. Comparatively speaking, both railways and freeways allow for the fastest journeys to be made and they also have the highest scope for increasing capacity to transport people around cities in their respective purviews. In isolation both types of transport modes...

Orbital rail lines in Melbourne: where would they go?

Fri, 08/05/2015 - 00:00 Alastair Taylor
Today's piece is inspired somewhat by Grant Wyeth 's ( @grantwyeth ) guest post over on Alan Davies' The Urbanist blog and it centers exclusively on where would an orbital rail line (or set of rail lines) in Melbourne go under the right circumstances. Is strong projected population growth enough to provide us with the 'right' circumstances in future? What are the 'right' circumstances? How could our 'right' circumstances be different to any...

Fishermans Bend transport: fast, frequent and automated

Tue, 21/04/2015 - 00:00 Alastair Taylor
It seems that no matter which party is in government on Spring Street there's always one eye on the long-term development of central Melbourne. After an intense two days of East-West Link and Melbourne Metro news, it was the Planning Minister's turn to be in the spotlight on Friday. The Fishermans Bend Urban Renewal Area has been expanded to include the area situated north of the West Gate freeway between both the West Gate and Bolte bridges,...

The Dandenong corridor wish list

Wed, 01/04/2015 - 12:00 Alastair Taylor
In a series of media releases, Spring Street has announced it has dumped the previous Coalition government's Dandenong corridor project - which was originally pitched to them by a private consortium - and have announced their own. Much noise was made about the PPP/Napthine scheme only removing four level crossings between Caulfield and Dandenong as well as a smaller number of trains that were to be ordered to run services on this major route. In...

Is it time to reconfigure the Moonee Ponds transport interchange?

Fri, 27/03/2015 - 00:00 Alastair Taylor
Moonee Ponds is an activity centre that for the most part flies under the radar, in terms of redevelopment currently happening and what can happen in future. The biggest landholder in the region is the Moonee Valley Racing Club and yesterday The Age reported on how the Planning Minister Richard Wynne has gazetted an updated development plan for the home of the Cox Plate. In terms of access Moonee Ponds has quite the repertoire of public...

The Alamein line: time for a new purpose?

Fri, 30/01/2015 - 08:00 Alastair Taylor
Melbourne loves its radial train lines. For over a century they have shunted commuters in and out of the centre of the city and even throughout the automobile age they've continued to be the best way to access the centre of the city as well as some peripheral centres based around junctions like Richmond, South Yarra and North Melbourne. In the Outer Circle documentary , released in December last year, we learned politicians from over a century...

Driving public transport options into Airport West & Essendon Airport

Wed, 26/03/2014 - 16:14 Alastair Taylor
Following on from Airport West and Essendon Airport: Auto-centricity status quo? , today we're looking at a possible way to improve public transport access to the Airport West and Essendon Airport precinct. The potential scenario as listed below centres around retrofitting an existing corridor to allow for multiple modes of public transport to use it - that is, the tram corridor which runs between Matthews Avenue and the Tullamarine Freeway...

Go West - Should We Move The Melbourne Metro Tunnel?

Fri, 14/03/2014 - 00:42 Martin Mankowski
When the Wall came down, thousands cheered as the bulldozers moved in. Millions more tuned in on their televisions to watch this once in a lifetime event. The Wall had divided the city in two for years, leaving it to develop almost completely different cultures. People would stop and try to peer through the cracks, trying to remember what a unified city was like. Finally, that time was coming to an end. The population would finally remember how...

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