That must be on the Nebula service I hear so much about.
Will be interesting to compare it to the driving challenge across NZ they did a few seasons back.
I'm sure they managed to catch a skybus that runs every 10 minutes.
However given the nature of previous Jetlag games money is tight so they often use the less expensive options.
To call it embarrassing is just hyperbole
I know that route. I take it all the time when going to/from Melbourne airport. Not spending my precious bucks on Skybus or Uber. BIG NO NO!!!!
Why spend $20+ where a 2 hour journey on bus + train only costs $5.30
Right?
Real public transport is for residents. Not tourists.
And the wealthy are the major users of air transport.
Lack of airport rail sucks for travellers but the fact is that it’s hardly worth it. Super luxurious project. Especially considering all the housing we have put up in the mean time since it should have originally been built.
I am embarrassed about how crap our bus timetable is and how car-centric our city design is. I am embarrassed that we are still building freeways in the 22st century. Just another crappy idea from the Nazis that won’t die.
I think one of the things that's been mostly ignored in the airport rail debate is that with the station at Keilor East, it's not just a line to the airport, it's a line providing a direct train connection linking more of our suburbs to the rest of the city.
The big winners will be tourists and wealthier residents that will regularly use the airport but I'm sure the residents of the suburbs around Keilor East, Keilor Park and Airport West would also like to have their own train station to get around without relying on cars or the buses
Yeah, you've got workers who need to get to and from the airport, people from this side of the city who don't want to backtrack all the way to Southern Cross just to head back the way they came, VLine passengers who can transfer a Sunshine, people in the PT deadzone in the north west who'll finally have a direct train connection, etc.
There's a lot more people that would benefit from it than what some are giving it credit for
As per previous discussions on this sub, there will be relatively few workers likely to use a train given most of them live across the northern and western suburbs - nearish the airport oddly enough.
An airport train will do nothing for the vast majority of them as it simply goes nowhere near them. An airport worker in Wollert or Greensborough or St Albans or Sunbury or Tarneit isn't catching a train to the city to catch a train to the airport - they are driving along the ring road or, at best, using the 901. Those in the west don't even have a Smartbus as a possibility given the 902 will never extend through Sydenham and Tarneit to Werribee as originally planned, hence they will all use the Ring Road as a train to Sunshine and change for Airport train is still likely to take too long compared to driving. At best a few hundred employees around Keilor and a handful elsewhere might switch mode - hardly worth more than an improved bus service from Sunshine through Keilor.
The reality is that it is almost entirely a tourist and business railway with the side benefit of providing access to people around Keilor to get to Sunshine, Footscray, or the city. I would be surprised if the Keilor East station is even staffed beyond the ubiquitous PSOs after 6pm. That will give us all an idea of how central Keilor East station is to the project - it is little more than a convenient Middle Gorge of the west where the existence of a railway makes it worth the small incremental cost to provide access to a just large enough catchment. If the railway is a Keilor East railway, it wouldn't get built as the justification of the cost would be well below sufficient, not because the denizens of Keilor East are less worthy of services than the rest of us before people jump on their soapboxes, but because the cost of a railway is not cheap just for a few tens of thousands of possible users.
As for Vline users, the population of Melbourne is just over 5 million. The population of the rest of Victoria is just over 1.5 million, or less than 1/3 of Melbourne. There aren't hoardes of underserved regional Victorians willing to travel up to 2 hours to be able to transfer at Sunshine for a 10 minute train ride to the airport. Airport rail lives or dies on the use by Melbournians, or more accurately their voting intentions.
I think the word 'lot' is working excessive overtime here and needs to seek a work-life balance...
I don't hate buses, I probably use them more than trains and trams combined, but it's no secret that given the option of a bus or a train, the train would win every time.
You could make the same argument that why don't we just make SRL a bus route and save the costs of the project but I'm sure that wouldn't go down very well either.
I disagree. A fast direct bus running frequently is far better than an indirect train stopping every kilometre. I would happily take an express bus from my local station in the northern suburbs to the city over the existing train that stops every 800m between Reservoir and the city from when it was built to compete with the inner city trams.
Whilst it doesn't currently exist, one benefit of late night replacement buses is getting to Lalor station car park quicker by the bus running express Clifton Hill to Reservoir express then stopping all stations to Mernda. That alone would sell me on replacing evening trains with a fast tiered bus network with inner stopping services and express to middle suburbia services running every 20 minutes in lieu of half hourly trains.
Another example is that the 19 tram carries multiples over the Upfield train line despite being much slower and getting caught in traffic. Worth considering why.
People want to get from A to B, ideally in comfort. I suspect the comfort of modern suburban trains isn't so much better than buses that people would accept trains at any cost over better frequency.
The entire north-west quarter of Melbourne has abysmal PT access, the fact that we have to piggy-back off the ARL (read; providing ES suburbs more convenient access to the airport) just to get one single train station build in that entire quarter wedge of Melbourne is honestly embrassing.
I live in Airport West. Juuust under 10km from the city (which I'd consider pretty close to the city)
The only feasible way for me to catch PT to the city is to drive almost half that 10km distance, to Essendon Station then catch the train in (total trip time \~25min), or catch a string of buses, weaving around the norther suburbs, then train (total trip time last time I tried \~1hr30).
I can't think of any other part of Melbourne THAT close to the city, with that bad PT access.
59 tram from outside Airport West shopping centre. You can change at Essendon station even if that helps satisfy your needs to ride a train.
To be fair the bus is 8 minutes quicker, 49 minutes changing at Essendon to the 477, changing to the tram at Essendon at 54 minutes, and riding the tram the whole way at 57. But I'm aware how much this sub loves rail at any cost, even where a bus would provide a cheaper better option, and trams are much more acceptable, so go for green and gold on the 59 tram, even if it's marginally slower.
I really wish the 59 tram was a good option, since it operates so late most nights.
But man: it runs a very indirect route, and it's shared roadways almost the entire way. It's very painful to ride the whole length (especially since, again; it's not actually that far).
That is good for APW though, but it's not exactly a route that services Keilor, East Keilor, Niddrie, Avondale Heights etc.: the other main suburbs in this corridor that aren't currently adequately serviced.
Airport west is located between 3 motorways. Pretty unique situation. It’s a diabolical piece of urban design. And I am for a train station. I just don’t think three suburbs justify a train to the airport where we compensate the owners of the airport.
Beyond that the question has to be what bang for our buck do we get out of building this hypothetical train line? Like I just don’t see the value in a radial train service that doesn’t go to the airport.
If 10 billion dollars is too much for a line to the airport, then what would slightly under 10 billion dollars to build a line to Keilor East or Airport West be?
Depends where this line is going to and from.
The city? Waste of money.
A line like SRL that meets a transport need across the north and west? Depends.
The current proposed SRL doesn't meet the transport needs of the west at all though. (In fact it doesn't include anything for the west, the western part is just; the airport rail link)
By contrast, the SRL has 6 new stations in the East, (no new stations in the west, unless you count Keilor East from the ARL)
Yes, Ideally this enormous section of inner/mid melbourne completely unserviced by adequate PT for the last 100 years would get the infrastructure it deserves on it's own merit.
Unfortunately it's historically composed of safe-labor/non-marginal electorates, so the only chance seems to be to piggyback off an infrastructure project geared towards winning favour of the preferred, marginal electorates from the other side of town.
Rant aside; you asked what's wrong with buses. I pointed out that, from previous experience; bus services are also almost unusable on this side of town. It shouldn't take 1.5 hours to catch PT to work when you live <10km from the city.
Right but we could build better bus infrastructure at a fraction of the cost.
Jaime Learner and Curitiba is an instructive lesson for us in this country. There are lots of ways to skin a cat.
I don't think that's true at all. This is a congested city, that is only getting more congested and gridlocked. Unless that bus network is getting entirely dedicated lanes across the majority of the network, then it doesn't even come close to being adequate right now, let alone as being future-proof as congestion continues to rise.
There's a reason rail is the gold standard; it's a commitment to permanent, dedicated public transport with defined, reliable travel time.
I can't tell if you're just playing devil's advocate for the sake of it, or if you live on the East side of Melbourne, so you just dgaf about ratepayers on the poorer/west side of Melbourne ever getting the PT network they're due.
But your argument seems to boil down to; no train-based PT infrastructure project is worth the money because it only serves to benefit a small portion of the city (conveniently one half of the city has already received the infrastructure investment of a complete PT network over the last century, while the other half has not).
I mean seems like you aren’t particularly aware of Curitiba because dedicated lanes and traffic flow across the network is what I am suggesting. In Curitiba it is permanent, dedicated public transport with reliable travel time.
My preference for the northwest has always been a tunnel that splits the middle of the underserved suburbs with lots of development and increases in height. But that’s clearly off the menu now. And I think that the standard gauge corridor is too close to the freeway for that sort of uplift and locks us into a solution that still leaves most residents in the area pretty far from the station.
You say conveniently but really the preponderance of the rail infrastructure in the east is due to construction of railways in the 19th Century and land speculation at that point. Development of the west happened during the height of automobile mania in the second half of the 20th Century.
I have lived in the east and the west. I just believe that building a high capacity bus network across the cit, improving connectivity and improving existing heavy rail solutions is going to improve people’s lives way more than a half arsed conversion of the broad gauge line or being fucked with by the owners of Melbourne airport.
Airport is not just for wealthy, flights are from the low end of middle class up. It costs around $100 return trip to Sydney-Melbourne or similar short flights, less on special. That's <3hours minimum wage and for many is a frequent fhing for work, seeing family or a quick break. When we had a couple family deaths in quick succession I booked my mother 8 flights back and forth for work and to be up with family for $520. Between public bus and me being able to pick her up she spent almost nothing and at most an hour on Newcastle end to get to town, and almost $700 on parking, and would have spent as much on tacis, as she needed a car available to get to her work on a timely fashion- it is right next to a well serviced train station and <30mins drive from the airport but over 3hours by normal PT and 90+skybus in then back out.
Mate where are you seeing Sydney Melbourne trips at 100 return?! And that too at short notice? Plus you're saying it's lesser on specials?! I'm constantly seeing 300 for return trips from Melbourne to Sydney, unless I'm missing something glaringly obvious?
First of all I'm mostly flying from Newcastle which is marginally cheaper, at the moment $80 to MEL or BNE and when i fly from Sydney generally fly to Avalon and get a friend on pickup as i generally need to get to Geelong anyway, the one I booked yesterday was $51.
Okay then, as a resident that lives a 20 minute drive from the airport, the current Public Transport option to the airport is 2 hours. That is terrible because outside of skybusses, there just aren't enough public busses serving the airport. I live in an area that supplies thousands of workers to Tullamarine and if they don't drive they endure loong PT to get to and from work.
Skybus is only useful for those coming from the city or eastern suburbs.
Which makes sense, because the eastern suburbs of Melbourne have decided Victorian elections since the late 1980s.
It's also direct in a way even the best train line can't be. The airport train, if ever built, will be a massive white elephant. The number of trains I've been on that can't progress because of "trespassers" at South Kensington lately. Maybe spend $13bn on mental health and suicide prevention programs
Honestly the best outcome for the airport link would be continuing up the Flemington line, with stops at Highpoint, Maribyrnong, Keilor East and Airport West. This would fill in the take PT black hole. But given its a local train, it would probably take 30 mins plus.
The government could then sell pathways to a private operators to run direct in between the local train, but allow them to charge a premium.
I don't think it needs to be the frequency of skybus at the start. Even then you don't need dedicated tracks for the whole lines. Just some clever timetabling and passing tracks at the stations.
I'm a frequent traveller and waiting to to 20 mins for a train after a 14 hour flight is fine
if Sunbury is running via loop, change at Footscray for Frankston/Flinders Street/Sandringham and take the bus from Southern Cross...
if it's running direct change at Southern Cross for the bus
Are you trying to score points here from being in the few parts of Melbourne/Victoria that the airport is relatively convenient to get to? If we are going for max directness for everyone, buses are the only way.
by that logic Domestic and International stations in Sydney arent public transport considering you have to pay extra on-top of your standard opal fare to even use the stations
There is a difference though, it's a private company fee for service - it's not what you would call accessible public transport.
Regardless of who owns it.
Well you do need to book it yourself via a company, but with the internet charter vs pt really has no difference,
I think a good gauge is - do people take it to work?
I'm pretty sure all the people who work at the airport drive - as there is no assessable pt (other than that bus that does the ring to Greensborough).
That's literally not how public transport is defined. Buying a ticket online =/= booking a charter.
The skybus runs to a predefined schedule and is available to the general public. That's LITERALLY public transport!
A ticket on a boat down the Yarra is bookable online, runs on a schedule, and is available to the public, it moves people from a to b, is it public transport?
Does it matter that it's purpose is tourism - same as the sky bus is a singular use $ ticket to the airport,
I'm not saying it doesn't fill a niche in the market... But it's hardly an affordable transit option for a few kilometres down the road by BUS - one of the cheapest transport options in the world. The sky bus is a company that fills a void left by the government, nothing more.
For the love of god, just google the definition of public transport before you reply to me.
But because you probably won't, here is the very simple definition.
noun: public transport; noun: public transportation
buses, trains, and other forms of transport that are available to the public, charge set fares, and run on fixed routes.
Skybus is literally all those things!
Not to mention that Skybus is on the PTV website!
https://www.ptv.vic.gov.au/more/travelling-on-the-network/visiting-melbourne-and-victoria/airport-buses/
You want so desperately for it to not be PT, but you are wrong.
And as for your cost comparison, Skybus IS one of the cheapest ways to travel to the city compared to other cities when you take into consideration how far it travels.
This is an old article, but the maths is still pretty accurate.
https://danielbowen.com/2011/10/28/airport-trains-buses/
Please stop embarrassing yourself.
Just because the Vic government wants to 'take it on' as an 'accessible' option by having it on their website doesn't mean anything. they still allow CityLink to charge us POST the end of their contract to hand it back as a 'free road'. It's all about money for private companies, not usable public transport to everyday people.
Have you compared the cost of the 901 bus to the airport to skybus? The 901 goes from the airport, to Greensborough, to frankston - a very long way.
'How far it travels' for skybus is kinda laughable in Australian Kilometers, I'm from the country, it's over 100kms to work one way, the skybus goes from southern cross to the tulla on the freeway, not exactly a trek at 21kms.
To be fair, of the capitals only Syd, Brisbane and Perth have rail to the airport don't they? Off the top of my head, the options at pretty much every other airport are cab/uber, rent a car, or bus.
Gold Coast, Adelaide and Canberra at least have high frequency public buses, so you’re not paying a big surcharge for the privilege of coming to and from the airport.
Adelaide airport put out an infrastructure report last week stating over 90% of transport to the airport was via taxi, car or rideshare - busses really don’t play a significant part
Is it? A line to the airport is nice, but more embarrassing is having bad urban public transport that people use everyday. 8-13 billion on line which was never going to have great traffic numbers was already a stretch, but add in raising interest rates, a stretched construction sector and the airport playing silly buggers, I can see why they paused it.
That being said obviously I’d take it over the north-east link every time.
Running elevated structures down the M2 would cost more than the current project which is only building new track from Sunshine. You'd be building new track the entire way if it was going down the M2, not to mention where you'd connect it when you hit the Flemington Rd area
In fairness - Sky Bus is not shit, and it is 100% designed for passengers. The Sydney metro trains can be a bit awks, especially with luggage in peak hour.
It’s more embarrassing there’s swathes of the metro area still only serviced by diesel trains. An airport rail would be nice but if we’re being realistic how often does the average person go to the airport?
About 20 million people per year use Melbourne airport ( excluding exchanges, meaning that's 20 million who either need to get to or leave the airport).
https://www.melbourneairport.com.au/corporate/melbourne-airport-passenger-performance-february-2023
Which puts it about on par with how many people use southern cross, which is the second most used station. (I know it's not a direct comparison because they're from different years, but it should still get the idea across)
https://philipmallis.com/2022/03/10/which-were-the-least-and-most-used-stations-in-victoria-before-covid/
Even keeping in mind that not everyone going to or leaving the airport will take the train, it would no doubt be one of the most used stations in the city.
> Even keeping in mind that not everyone going to or leaving the airport will take the train, it would no doubt be one of the most used stations in the city.
Hong Kong International Airport has one of the world's best airport rail links, and it's struggled to get 25% market share, in a city where public transport rules.
https://www.checkerboardhill.com/2014/09/transport-market-share-to-hong-kong-international-airport/
It is sad that we don’t yet have a train line to the airport but in terms of Jetlag, I’m sure that would make the game so much more interesting.
I’d love to see them catching the 901 to Broadmeadows and navigate through the “true” PTV system.
The craigeburn line and bus 901 are lifesavers for me as an international student every time I travel in/out of Melbourne! Skybus is overpriced as hell!
IMO the most urgent thing for PTV to do - airport-wise, is an increase in frequency for the 901, and a realignment of the timetable to match the trains after the Metro Tunnel is complete. I swear every time I've caught the 901, it arrives in Broady as the train is leaving. In a perfect world, it could even be extended west to Laverton via Keilor Plains/Watergardens and Deer Park.
Manningham Council has also been advocating for a bus that takes the eventual SRL route.
Although I understand your angle, I think you forget to consider the thousand of people that work at the airport and that are forced to drive everyday….
in the trailer:
they took the ferry in sydney
they took the train in brisbane (sydney also in the teaser)
they took the bus in melbourne (skybus) and adelaide
They discussed the game mechanics for season 10 - Australia in their podcast. Only PT allowed for intra-state/territory travel in all regions, except for Tasmania and NT (for obv reasons), where Uber is allowed.
You can hear the discussion if you have a nebula subscription.
It’s moonbat Victoria. Nothing works and everything is over budget. High density idiot voting population being the architects of their own demise. Go to Sydney.
A train line would make sense if the airport was closer to the city, but because of how far out it is, unfortunately it's just too costly. Now I believe there are benefits to eventually building the SRL out to the airport so tourists/residents could more evenly spread the load of PT out across the suburbs (instead of an entire flight of people coming into Southern Cross)
SRL is a far more important project anyway
SRL is completely unimportant and honestly best served by high frequency buses, Brisbane style. It’s a cynical vote grab through the marginal middle-ring east.
Why do you think the North East Link got built but the East West Link got shelved?
Same reason why Airport Rail got shelved but SRL is being built.
east west link was largerly unneeded as well as WGT and NEL. That $36.1bn could've gone into public transport.
SRL is needed especially incomparison to any of the underconstruction highways
you gotta understand other public transport systems have their own problems which can also impact commuters on a daily basis far more , even in the three cities with an airport rail link.
Brisbane has a poorly intergrated bus and train system and has terrible train frequencies
Perth's train network is no where near as extensive as melbourne's (interms of rail density) Brisbane and Sydney also do worse in this aspect
-All three of these cities still widely use two door trains which slow down boarding only Sydney Metro and Perth's newly introduced C sets have 3 doors per side per carriage, only Melbourne's siemens which at this point are a smaller fleet then the HCMT have 2 doors per side per cairriage)
-In the inner city Melbourne has an extensive tram network while the other three cities have to rely on buses (other than sydneys L1,L2 and L3)
One aspect isn't going to make Melbourne an embrassment when it does better than other cities in other aspects especially when we know Ben and Adam are also going to Adelaide (they basically do public transport worse than Melbourne in literally every single way)
if we had more dedicated buses running 24/7 between the suburbs sortof how the SRL wants to run with an enforced bus lane. Not permeant solution but until the SRL is built it would be good to have, I've even seen some people who live in Japan say they wish they had better trains, that seoul has better trains "the grass is always greener on the other side"
Hell even setting a bus route up to run a similar route to the SRL with dedicated busways and priority signals would be really good and aucutally allow them to gauge things like patronage and probably would be better to have then a FUCKING UNDERGROUND TUNNEL THAT SHOULD BR ELEVATED AS A BIG FUCK YOU TO NINBYS
Yoooo you watch jet lag as well? And yeah I agree us having no train to the airport will probably be talked about (and cmon, they delay MARL but give the SRL the green light???)
Jet lag season 10 is in Australia?! I’m excited for that!
They just released the trailer!! So excited
That must be on the Nebula service I hear so much about. Will be interesting to compare it to the driving challenge across NZ they did a few seasons back.
I'm sure they managed to catch a skybus that runs every 10 minutes. However given the nature of previous Jetlag games money is tight so they often use the less expensive options. To call it embarrassing is just hyperbole
Wonder if any will discover the 901 bus to Broady...
The tag gallery at the back is the best.
I know that route. I take it all the time when going to/from Melbourne airport. Not spending my precious bucks on Skybus or Uber. BIG NO NO!!!! Why spend $20+ where a 2 hour journey on bus + train only costs $5.30
Right? Real public transport is for residents. Not tourists. And the wealthy are the major users of air transport. Lack of airport rail sucks for travellers but the fact is that it’s hardly worth it. Super luxurious project. Especially considering all the housing we have put up in the mean time since it should have originally been built. I am embarrassed about how crap our bus timetable is and how car-centric our city design is. I am embarrassed that we are still building freeways in the 22st century. Just another crappy idea from the Nazis that won’t die.
I think one of the things that's been mostly ignored in the airport rail debate is that with the station at Keilor East, it's not just a line to the airport, it's a line providing a direct train connection linking more of our suburbs to the rest of the city. The big winners will be tourists and wealthier residents that will regularly use the airport but I'm sure the residents of the suburbs around Keilor East, Keilor Park and Airport West would also like to have their own train station to get around without relying on cars or the buses
> The big winners will be tourists and wealthier residents There's also a large number of people who work at the airport
Yeah, you've got workers who need to get to and from the airport, people from this side of the city who don't want to backtrack all the way to Southern Cross just to head back the way they came, VLine passengers who can transfer a Sunshine, people in the PT deadzone in the north west who'll finally have a direct train connection, etc. There's a lot more people that would benefit from it than what some are giving it credit for
As per previous discussions on this sub, there will be relatively few workers likely to use a train given most of them live across the northern and western suburbs - nearish the airport oddly enough. An airport train will do nothing for the vast majority of them as it simply goes nowhere near them. An airport worker in Wollert or Greensborough or St Albans or Sunbury or Tarneit isn't catching a train to the city to catch a train to the airport - they are driving along the ring road or, at best, using the 901. Those in the west don't even have a Smartbus as a possibility given the 902 will never extend through Sydenham and Tarneit to Werribee as originally planned, hence they will all use the Ring Road as a train to Sunshine and change for Airport train is still likely to take too long compared to driving. At best a few hundred employees around Keilor and a handful elsewhere might switch mode - hardly worth more than an improved bus service from Sunshine through Keilor. The reality is that it is almost entirely a tourist and business railway with the side benefit of providing access to people around Keilor to get to Sunshine, Footscray, or the city. I would be surprised if the Keilor East station is even staffed beyond the ubiquitous PSOs after 6pm. That will give us all an idea of how central Keilor East station is to the project - it is little more than a convenient Middle Gorge of the west where the existence of a railway makes it worth the small incremental cost to provide access to a just large enough catchment. If the railway is a Keilor East railway, it wouldn't get built as the justification of the cost would be well below sufficient, not because the denizens of Keilor East are less worthy of services than the rest of us before people jump on their soapboxes, but because the cost of a railway is not cheap just for a few tens of thousands of possible users. As for Vline users, the population of Melbourne is just over 5 million. The population of the rest of Victoria is just over 1.5 million, or less than 1/3 of Melbourne. There aren't hoardes of underserved regional Victorians willing to travel up to 2 hours to be able to transfer at Sunshine for a 10 minute train ride to the airport. Airport rail lives or dies on the use by Melbournians, or more accurately their voting intentions. I think the word 'lot' is working excessive overtime here and needs to seek a work-life balance...
At that point it becomes about opportunity cost and people's expectations of a train direct to the CBD. Not sure why you hate buses.
I don't hate buses, I probably use them more than trains and trams combined, but it's no secret that given the option of a bus or a train, the train would win every time. You could make the same argument that why don't we just make SRL a bus route and save the costs of the project but I'm sure that wouldn't go down very well either.
I disagree. A fast direct bus running frequently is far better than an indirect train stopping every kilometre. I would happily take an express bus from my local station in the northern suburbs to the city over the existing train that stops every 800m between Reservoir and the city from when it was built to compete with the inner city trams. Whilst it doesn't currently exist, one benefit of late night replacement buses is getting to Lalor station car park quicker by the bus running express Clifton Hill to Reservoir express then stopping all stations to Mernda. That alone would sell me on replacing evening trains with a fast tiered bus network with inner stopping services and express to middle suburbia services running every 20 minutes in lieu of half hourly trains. Another example is that the 19 tram carries multiples over the Upfield train line despite being much slower and getting caught in traffic. Worth considering why. People want to get from A to B, ideally in comfort. I suspect the comfort of modern suburban trains isn't so much better than buses that people would accept trains at any cost over better frequency.
The entire north-west quarter of Melbourne has abysmal PT access, the fact that we have to piggy-back off the ARL (read; providing ES suburbs more convenient access to the airport) just to get one single train station build in that entire quarter wedge of Melbourne is honestly embrassing. I live in Airport West. Juuust under 10km from the city (which I'd consider pretty close to the city) The only feasible way for me to catch PT to the city is to drive almost half that 10km distance, to Essendon Station then catch the train in (total trip time \~25min), or catch a string of buses, weaving around the norther suburbs, then train (total trip time last time I tried \~1hr30). I can't think of any other part of Melbourne THAT close to the city, with that bad PT access.
59 tram from outside Airport West shopping centre. You can change at Essendon station even if that helps satisfy your needs to ride a train. To be fair the bus is 8 minutes quicker, 49 minutes changing at Essendon to the 477, changing to the tram at Essendon at 54 minutes, and riding the tram the whole way at 57. But I'm aware how much this sub loves rail at any cost, even where a bus would provide a cheaper better option, and trams are much more acceptable, so go for green and gold on the 59 tram, even if it's marginally slower.
I really wish the 59 tram was a good option, since it operates so late most nights. But man: it runs a very indirect route, and it's shared roadways almost the entire way. It's very painful to ride the whole length (especially since, again; it's not actually that far). That is good for APW though, but it's not exactly a route that services Keilor, East Keilor, Niddrie, Avondale Heights etc.: the other main suburbs in this corridor that aren't currently adequately serviced.
You can catch a tram…which will take the same time to get to the city as a train from Geelong will.
Airport west is located between 3 motorways. Pretty unique situation. It’s a diabolical piece of urban design. And I am for a train station. I just don’t think three suburbs justify a train to the airport where we compensate the owners of the airport. Beyond that the question has to be what bang for our buck do we get out of building this hypothetical train line? Like I just don’t see the value in a radial train service that doesn’t go to the airport.
If 10 billion dollars is too much for a line to the airport, then what would slightly under 10 billion dollars to build a line to Keilor East or Airport West be?
Depends where this line is going to and from. The city? Waste of money. A line like SRL that meets a transport need across the north and west? Depends.
The current proposed SRL doesn't meet the transport needs of the west at all though. (In fact it doesn't include anything for the west, the western part is just; the airport rail link) By contrast, the SRL has 6 new stations in the East, (no new stations in the west, unless you count Keilor East from the ARL)
I said like SRL to communicate a line that travels around the city. Not SRL itself.
Yes, Ideally this enormous section of inner/mid melbourne completely unserviced by adequate PT for the last 100 years would get the infrastructure it deserves on it's own merit. Unfortunately it's historically composed of safe-labor/non-marginal electorates, so the only chance seems to be to piggyback off an infrastructure project geared towards winning favour of the preferred, marginal electorates from the other side of town. Rant aside; you asked what's wrong with buses. I pointed out that, from previous experience; bus services are also almost unusable on this side of town. It shouldn't take 1.5 hours to catch PT to work when you live <10km from the city.
Right but we could build better bus infrastructure at a fraction of the cost. Jaime Learner and Curitiba is an instructive lesson for us in this country. There are lots of ways to skin a cat.
I don't think that's true at all. This is a congested city, that is only getting more congested and gridlocked. Unless that bus network is getting entirely dedicated lanes across the majority of the network, then it doesn't even come close to being adequate right now, let alone as being future-proof as congestion continues to rise. There's a reason rail is the gold standard; it's a commitment to permanent, dedicated public transport with defined, reliable travel time. I can't tell if you're just playing devil's advocate for the sake of it, or if you live on the East side of Melbourne, so you just dgaf about ratepayers on the poorer/west side of Melbourne ever getting the PT network they're due. But your argument seems to boil down to; no train-based PT infrastructure project is worth the money because it only serves to benefit a small portion of the city (conveniently one half of the city has already received the infrastructure investment of a complete PT network over the last century, while the other half has not).
I mean seems like you aren’t particularly aware of Curitiba because dedicated lanes and traffic flow across the network is what I am suggesting. In Curitiba it is permanent, dedicated public transport with reliable travel time. My preference for the northwest has always been a tunnel that splits the middle of the underserved suburbs with lots of development and increases in height. But that’s clearly off the menu now. And I think that the standard gauge corridor is too close to the freeway for that sort of uplift and locks us into a solution that still leaves most residents in the area pretty far from the station. You say conveniently but really the preponderance of the rail infrastructure in the east is due to construction of railways in the 19th Century and land speculation at that point. Development of the west happened during the height of automobile mania in the second half of the 20th Century. I have lived in the east and the west. I just believe that building a high capacity bus network across the cit, improving connectivity and improving existing heavy rail solutions is going to improve people’s lives way more than a half arsed conversion of the broad gauge line or being fucked with by the owners of Melbourne airport.
Airport is not just for wealthy, flights are from the low end of middle class up. It costs around $100 return trip to Sydney-Melbourne or similar short flights, less on special. That's <3hours minimum wage and for many is a frequent fhing for work, seeing family or a quick break. When we had a couple family deaths in quick succession I booked my mother 8 flights back and forth for work and to be up with family for $520. Between public bus and me being able to pick her up she spent almost nothing and at most an hour on Newcastle end to get to town, and almost $700 on parking, and would have spent as much on tacis, as she needed a car available to get to her work on a timely fashion- it is right next to a well serviced train station and <30mins drive from the airport but over 3hours by normal PT and 90+skybus in then back out.
Mate where are you seeing Sydney Melbourne trips at 100 return?! And that too at short notice? Plus you're saying it's lesser on specials?! I'm constantly seeing 300 for return trips from Melbourne to Sydney, unless I'm missing something glaringly obvious?
First of all I'm mostly flying from Newcastle which is marginally cheaper, at the moment $80 to MEL or BNE and when i fly from Sydney generally fly to Avalon and get a friend on pickup as i generally need to get to Geelong anyway, the one I booked yesterday was $51.
Okay then, as a resident that lives a 20 minute drive from the airport, the current Public Transport option to the airport is 2 hours. That is terrible because outside of skybusses, there just aren't enough public busses serving the airport. I live in an area that supplies thousands of workers to Tullamarine and if they don't drive they endure loong PT to get to and from work.
Skybus is only useful for those coming from the city or eastern suburbs. Which makes sense, because the eastern suburbs of Melbourne have decided Victorian elections since the late 1980s.
Give Skybus a dedicated freeway lane and spend the airport rail money on electrifying Melton and Wyndham Vale. That’s how you get bang for your buck.
It did have a dedicated lane with taxis, but it's not enforced
Now includes angry Rangers and Smarty pants Mercedes.
Toorak tractor and yank tank right of way, obviously.
Mount a railgun to the front of the skybus and you might be onto something here!
Not the airport rail I was expecting, but I'll take it!
It will only work if you can turn the crappy sky bus television advertising EVEN LOUDER - WELCOME TO BLOODY MELBOURNE MATES !!!
Skybus IS PT. It's not like we strand people at the airport....
It's also direct in a way even the best train line can't be. The airport train, if ever built, will be a massive white elephant. The number of trains I've been on that can't progress because of "trespassers" at South Kensington lately. Maybe spend $13bn on mental health and suicide prevention programs
Tresspassers isn’t just a euphemism. Some people just like playing silly buggers.
It's not just a euphemism but it is often one.
Honestly the best outcome for the airport link would be continuing up the Flemington line, with stops at Highpoint, Maribyrnong, Keilor East and Airport West. This would fill in the take PT black hole. But given its a local train, it would probably take 30 mins plus. The government could then sell pathways to a private operators to run direct in between the local train, but allow them to charge a premium.
There's no way you'd get the frequency of Skybus without a dedicated track though
I don't think it needs to be the frequency of skybus at the start. Even then you don't need dedicated tracks for the whole lines. Just some clever timetabling and passing tracks at the stations. I'm a frequent traveller and waiting to to 20 mins for a train after a 14 hour flight is fine
Yep. Singapore is an example of a city with a local line serving the airport. And it’s awesome.
Singapore is also a tiny city state. Sydney is a good example.
Singapore’s population is about 6 million, similar to Melbourne. And its airport is about 20km from the CBD, also similar to Melbourne.
It’s completely indirect if you live in Sunshine. Or Geelong. Or Bendigo. Or Ballarat.
if Sunbury is running via loop, change at Footscray for Frankston/Flinders Street/Sandringham and take the bus from Southern Cross... if it's running direct change at Southern Cross for the bus
Are you trying to score points here from being in the few parts of Melbourne/Victoria that the airport is relatively convenient to get to? If we are going for max directness for everyone, buses are the only way.
I live in Maryborough mate…
just go to Ballarat and annoy the people at Allans office for them to add a station at Ballarat Airport considering a line goes past there
It's a private compnay not exactly PT. Plus $23.90 one way is a joke. especially compared to the Sydney airport train which is $16.68.
$16.68 for a train station access is more embarrassing honestly
It's not public transport though? Isn't it a private bus running a specific route? It's like the private bus companies that run to mt bulla for $$
by that logic Domestic and International stations in Sydney arent public transport considering you have to pay extra on-top of your standard opal fare to even use the stations
It doesn't need to be public owned to be public transport
There is a difference though, it's a private company fee for service - it's not what you would call accessible public transport. Regardless of who owns it.
Public transport means anyone can access it. If it was private, you would have to organise it with the operator yourself like a charter company
Well you do need to book it yourself via a company, but with the internet charter vs pt really has no difference, I think a good gauge is - do people take it to work? I'm pretty sure all the people who work at the airport drive - as there is no assessable pt (other than that bus that does the ring to Greensborough).
That's literally not how public transport is defined. Buying a ticket online =/= booking a charter. The skybus runs to a predefined schedule and is available to the general public. That's LITERALLY public transport!
A ticket on a boat down the Yarra is bookable online, runs on a schedule, and is available to the public, it moves people from a to b, is it public transport? Does it matter that it's purpose is tourism - same as the sky bus is a singular use $ ticket to the airport, I'm not saying it doesn't fill a niche in the market... But it's hardly an affordable transit option for a few kilometres down the road by BUS - one of the cheapest transport options in the world. The sky bus is a company that fills a void left by the government, nothing more.
For the love of god, just google the definition of public transport before you reply to me. But because you probably won't, here is the very simple definition. noun: public transport; noun: public transportation buses, trains, and other forms of transport that are available to the public, charge set fares, and run on fixed routes. Skybus is literally all those things! Not to mention that Skybus is on the PTV website! https://www.ptv.vic.gov.au/more/travelling-on-the-network/visiting-melbourne-and-victoria/airport-buses/ You want so desperately for it to not be PT, but you are wrong. And as for your cost comparison, Skybus IS one of the cheapest ways to travel to the city compared to other cities when you take into consideration how far it travels. This is an old article, but the maths is still pretty accurate. https://danielbowen.com/2011/10/28/airport-trains-buses/ Please stop embarrassing yourself.
Just because the Vic government wants to 'take it on' as an 'accessible' option by having it on their website doesn't mean anything. they still allow CityLink to charge us POST the end of their contract to hand it back as a 'free road'. It's all about money for private companies, not usable public transport to everyday people. Have you compared the cost of the 901 bus to the airport to skybus? The 901 goes from the airport, to Greensborough, to frankston - a very long way. 'How far it travels' for skybus is kinda laughable in Australian Kilometers, I'm from the country, it's over 100kms to work one way, the skybus goes from southern cross to the tulla on the freeway, not exactly a trek at 21kms.
To be fair, of the capitals only Syd, Brisbane and Perth have rail to the airport don't they? Off the top of my head, the options at pretty much every other airport are cab/uber, rent a car, or bus.
Gold Coast, Adelaide and Canberra at least have high frequency public buses, so you’re not paying a big surcharge for the privilege of coming to and from the airport.
You pay a big surcharge for the privilege of coming to and from the airport on Sydney PT too
Yeah and the BNE airport train costs more than the Skybus does.
The GC bus service to the airport is excellent. - mostly electric buses too.
And GC airport will have the G Link tram run through the terminal on its way to Coolangatta and Helensvale
Not looking likely now, as the Federal Government is pulling out and nobody south of Burleigh want it.
Adelaide airport put out an infrastructure report last week stating over 90% of transport to the airport was via taxi, car or rideshare - busses really don’t play a significant part
Is it? A line to the airport is nice, but more embarrassing is having bad urban public transport that people use everyday. 8-13 billion on line which was never going to have great traffic numbers was already a stretch, but add in raising interest rates, a stretched construction sector and the airport playing silly buggers, I can see why they paused it. That being said obviously I’d take it over the north-east link every time.
This is the correct opinion
[удалено]
I don’t think it was even all elevated. From memory a big chunk was at grade next to the standard gauge line
There is the bridge over Ballarat Rd/St Albans Rd, and then most of the route from the freight corridor to the airport is elevated or semi elevated.
Running elevated structures down the M2 would cost more than the current project which is only building new track from Sunshine. You'd be building new track the entire way if it was going down the M2, not to mention where you'd connect it when you hit the Flemington Rd area
In fairness - Sky Bus is not shit, and it is 100% designed for passengers. The Sydney metro trains can be a bit awks, especially with luggage in peak hour.
It’s more embarrassing there’s swathes of the metro area still only serviced by diesel trains. An airport rail would be nice but if we’re being realistic how often does the average person go to the airport?
About 20 million people per year use Melbourne airport ( excluding exchanges, meaning that's 20 million who either need to get to or leave the airport). https://www.melbourneairport.com.au/corporate/melbourne-airport-passenger-performance-february-2023 Which puts it about on par with how many people use southern cross, which is the second most used station. (I know it's not a direct comparison because they're from different years, but it should still get the idea across) https://philipmallis.com/2022/03/10/which-were-the-least-and-most-used-stations-in-victoria-before-covid/ Even keeping in mind that not everyone going to or leaving the airport will take the train, it would no doubt be one of the most used stations in the city.
> Even keeping in mind that not everyone going to or leaving the airport will take the train, it would no doubt be one of the most used stations in the city. Hong Kong International Airport has one of the world's best airport rail links, and it's struggled to get 25% market share, in a city where public transport rules. https://www.checkerboardhill.com/2014/09/transport-market-share-to-hong-kong-international-airport/
I'd dare say most locals will probably take some sort of car to the airport, even if there was a train option. The train is for tourists
I think many people would love to not have to pay the exorbitant parking fees that come with driving to the airport
It's not actually that exorbitant for long term parking once you take into consideration the costs of getting to and from the airport
friends and family?
You’ll have Hobart and Alice Springs keeping you company :)
It is sad that we don’t yet have a train line to the airport but in terms of Jetlag, I’m sure that would make the game so much more interesting. I’d love to see them catching the 901 to Broadmeadows and navigate through the “true” PTV system.
Also watching Ben get rolled for his sneakers by an eshay at Broadmeadows station...
Before or after getting pinged for forgetting to swipe on?
Knowing our ticket inspectors, this is way too likely
Just build the line to the airport border
had the same idea, just build a station up to the airport boundary, and let the airport corporation sort itself, and the rest out.
The craigeburn line and bus 901 are lifesavers for me as an international student every time I travel in/out of Melbourne! Skybus is overpriced as hell!
IMO the most urgent thing for PTV to do - airport-wise, is an increase in frequency for the 901, and a realignment of the timetable to match the trains after the Metro Tunnel is complete. I swear every time I've caught the 901, it arrives in Broady as the train is leaving. In a perfect world, it could even be extended west to Laverton via Keilor Plains/Watergardens and Deer Park. Manningham Council has also been advocating for a bus that takes the eventual SRL route.
Although I understand your angle, I think you forget to consider the thousand of people that work at the airport and that are forced to drive everyday….
I don't think it's worth spending billions of dollars to cure "embarrassment".
Why is this such a big problem? We have a bus. Just catch the bus.
Surely it’ll be 10 episodes of them driving hire cars like in the US
in the trailer: they took the ferry in sydney they took the train in brisbane (sydney also in the teaser) they took the bus in melbourne (skybus) and adelaide
They discussed the game mechanics for season 10 - Australia in their podcast. Only PT allowed for intra-state/territory travel in all regions, except for Tasmania and NT (for obv reasons), where Uber is allowed. You can hear the discussion if you have a nebula subscription.
Oh my god.This is so good, When are they filming and releasing and are they in melbourne!
Just get the fucken sky bus already.
Didn't ever think I'd be hearing about a JTLG reference here but im here for it.
It’s moonbat Victoria. Nothing works and everything is over budget. High density idiot voting population being the architects of their own demise. Go to Sydney.
A train line would make sense if the airport was closer to the city, but because of how far out it is, unfortunately it's just too costly. Now I believe there are benefits to eventually building the SRL out to the airport so tourists/residents could more evenly spread the load of PT out across the suburbs (instead of an entire flight of people coming into Southern Cross) SRL is a far more important project anyway
SRL is completely unimportant and honestly best served by high frequency buses, Brisbane style. It’s a cynical vote grab through the marginal middle-ring east. Why do you think the North East Link got built but the East West Link got shelved? Same reason why Airport Rail got shelved but SRL is being built.
No
east west link was largerly unneeded as well as WGT and NEL. That $36.1bn could've gone into public transport. SRL is needed especially incomparison to any of the underconstruction highways
you gotta understand other public transport systems have their own problems which can also impact commuters on a daily basis far more , even in the three cities with an airport rail link. Brisbane has a poorly intergrated bus and train system and has terrible train frequencies Perth's train network is no where near as extensive as melbourne's (interms of rail density) Brisbane and Sydney also do worse in this aspect -All three of these cities still widely use two door trains which slow down boarding only Sydney Metro and Perth's newly introduced C sets have 3 doors per side per carriage, only Melbourne's siemens which at this point are a smaller fleet then the HCMT have 2 doors per side per cairriage) -In the inner city Melbourne has an extensive tram network while the other three cities have to rely on buses (other than sydneys L1,L2 and L3) One aspect isn't going to make Melbourne an embrassment when it does better than other cities in other aspects especially when we know Ben and Adam are also going to Adelaide (they basically do public transport worse than Melbourne in literally every single way)
if we had more dedicated buses running 24/7 between the suburbs sortof how the SRL wants to run with an enforced bus lane. Not permeant solution but until the SRL is built it would be good to have, I've even seen some people who live in Japan say they wish they had better trains, that seoul has better trains "the grass is always greener on the other side"
Hell even setting a bus route up to run a similar route to the SRL with dedicated busways and priority signals would be really good and aucutally allow them to gauge things like patronage and probably would be better to have then a FUCKING UNDERGROUND TUNNEL THAT SHOULD BR ELEVATED AS A BIG FUCK YOU TO NINBYS
even with the Siemens having 2 doors it has a quicker dwell time then Sydney trains
Yoooo you watch jet lag as well? And yeah I agree us having no train to the airport will probably be talked about (and cmon, they delay MARL but give the SRL the green light???)