With Melbourne Central being one of the most used railway stations in Melbourne, you would think regular maintenance would be a priority. Unfortunately the reality is very different, as my list of items that require repairs show.
Dozens of fluorescent lights opposite the platforms are dead.
Ceiling cladding panels are missing.
Concrete along the tunnel floor is cracked.
Water leaks in the tunnel result in black crud being washed down the walls.
Even the signs Public Transport Victoria added last year are already covered with tunnel grime.
It seems like the out of date billboards are the least of the problems Metro Trains has to deal with at Melbourne Central!
Footnote
Structural decay of the City Loop have been an issue for years – since 2011 it has popped in Melbourne’s newspapers on a number of occasions.
On the patronage front, Melbourne Central is the third most used railway station in Melbourne – here is the 2011-12 patronage data from Public Transport Victoria.
It’s the grotty paint showing obvious signs of water damage on the walls and ceilings which gets to me, I’m not a regular user so I’m not sure that it’s still there, but I bet that it is.
It makes me wonder the last time they bothered washing everything down.
Perhaps it’s intentional: so that when you get into a train that hasn’t been properly cleaned in years it doesn’t feel so dirty?
If you can find a filthier train, we’ll beat it!
Regarding the cleanliness of the rolling stock; whilst every unit is cleaned over night with some sought out for extra attention when human excitements or bodily fluids are found. MTM has agreed after 10+ years of service money has been allocated to “spruce” up the fleet.
I can’t speak for the other fleets other then the Siemens NEXAS fleet, but recently a second 3 car unit went into service after an intensive deep clean which involves full strip out of the saloon area where every panel was re-coated with the anti-vandal paint and floors re-buffed, all windows re-filmed with anti-graffiti film on the glass which can be easily replaced without changing the whole window and seat cushion mods (which are the addition of the new supposedly anti-graffiti) which has the distinctive “station names” design and brand new decals so it looks like it just rolled out of commissioning back in 2000-2002.
Although this roll out is slow, impacted with the rest of the fleet planned to be out for service for several weeks as part of the Digital Radio and VICERS modification so they just a basic deep clean which involved a team of Berkeley contractors and do a scrub of all the walls and floor (the quality would be a little better then what a unit gets nightly with extra attention to removing the graffiti on the walls) and of course the glass film if it hasn’t been done.
So in summery MTM has allocated a budget amount of money to combat the image of the fleets which apparently is the next big “nit pick” of the public when reliability of services improves.