Make Melbourne Green

As rising fuel costs squeeze more and more people onto Melbourne’s existing public transport system, commuters boarding at South Kensington station are hit hardest. The last station for city-bound trains coming from the Werribee and Williamstown lines before the two northern lines are added at North Melbourne station, commuters are all too often stranded on platforms as trains are too full to take on any more passengers.

Monday the 16th of June was such a day: commuters stood on the platforms at South Kensington station for forty minutes before a train arrived that could just squeeze some more passengers in.

Melbourne City Council candidate and Kensington local Donna Lancaster, who frequently uses South Kensington station, explains that some city-bound commuters find that it’s more time-efficient to take trains or buses back to Footscray to board trains coming from the Sydenham line (which has not stopped at South Kensington station for years to relieve pressure on the system!) than it is to wait on the platform.

“It’s not an option to go to Kensington Station as the Craigieburn line trains are full as well, and for some people, that’s a 25 minute walk” says Donna.

“The biggest insult to locals using South Kensington station is that they walk across JJ Holland Park to get there; the park that the Eddington Report recommends digging up to facilitate the building of the $10 billion East-West tunnel.”

For Kensington residents, the choice is clear: Public Transport, not roads!

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But Eddington’s report does mention public transport, doesn’t it? If you read Sunday’s Age, you might have noticed a piece by its state politics reporter Melissa Fyfe, “Beyond tunnel vision“. In it, she argues that

the public transport advocates’ response to the rail tunnel idea — and the other non-car initiatives in Eddington — has been bewildering.

Perhaps she undermines the skepticism with which Melbournians treat state government public transport projects.

After all, where is the Doncaster line? A corridor was left down the middle of the Eastern Freeway for just such a project: land cuttings were made, properties were acquired, and the route has been set out since 1972. Labor and Liberal state governments have, ever since, toyed with the public during election years with renewed, ultimately empty, promises to build it. Many other proposed rail projects have suffered a similar fate.

It is important to remember that no major public transport project has been started in this city since 1971, when the City Loop construction commenced. That’s 37 years of built-up skepticism: surely enough to shake off Melissa Fyfe’s bewilderment! Surely enough, too, to justify the suspicion of South Kensington and Greater Melbourne residents that the East-West rail project will only be entertained for as long as it takes to complete construction of the East-West freeway tunnel.

The filter of skepticism with which public transport lobbyists view Eddington’s report will only lead them to predict that the Eddington rail project will go the same way as the Doncaster rail project. Until the Brumby government shows that they’re serious about building heavy rail infrastructure, that’s not likely to change.

Even if the Rail Tunnel was to be built, it would do little to help people in Doncaster, Rowville, South Morang, or Caroline Springs, who right now are crying out for trains to service their suburbs. These extensions can be built at a fraction of the cost of the Rail Tunnel, and coupled with minimal network changes (including how the City Loop is run) would be vastly more effective in increasing the availability of public transport to Melbournians.

In the meantime, the Greens remain the only party committed to prioritising Public Transport over road construction, and the contest for Lord Mayor of Melbourne will likely see the incumbent, John So, an enthusiastic supporter of the East-West tunnel project, face off against Greens candidate Adam Bandt, an ardent public transport advocate.