At the moment there is a four week disruption to the Sunbury line in order to place the tracks underground at Main Road and Furlong Road, and open new railway stations at St Albans and Ginifer. I’m curious as to why such a length of time is required to complete this set of works, when other projects in Melbourne suggest it could have been achieved with less disruption.
In October 2016 Melbourne newspaper The Age revealed that $300 million would soon need to be spent at Southern Cross Station in order to cater for increasing passenger numbers. So why are the works expected to cost so much, and why does a ten year old station already need to be expanded?
With a program of 50 level crossing removals planned for Melbourne, with many of them already underway, one would assume that the last thing that the government would be doing is building NEW level crossings. But yet again, a lack of planning is seeing money go down the drain – this time at Cardinia Road on the Pakenham line.
Caroline Springs has been waiting a long time for a railway station but it is almost here – construction is well underway and the station due to open sometime in 2016. However the project has not been a simple one, and a lack of forward planning has resulted in a critical piece of infrastructure bring rendered almost useless – the access road!
Hundreds of millions of dollars are currently being spent on Sunbury line at St Albans to grade separate Furlong Road and Main Road, with Ginifer and St Albans stations also being rebuilt as part of the work. A noble objective given the history of fatal accidents in the area, but thanks to the half-arsed way the project has been planned, the Level Crossing Removal Authority has missed the most important bit – removing every level crossing.
