RRL Roundup Part 1: Trains

via Public Transport Victoria

On June 21, Geelong-line trains will finally start using the Regional Rail Link tracks, separating them from Werribee-line suburban trains and grouping them together with Ballarat- and Bendigo-line regional trains. Although the infrastructure was finished months ago, the Andrews government decided to push back the opening date until more trains were built - which was entirely reasonable, given how close to capacity V/Line's fleet is.

Slightly less reasonable, however, is the fact that the new timetables for this change were only released on Sunday, three weeks before the opening date - and they mean sweeping changes for a lot of the network. It's not just the trains that run on these lines that will be affected, but the buses in Melbourne and in regional cities that connect with them. It is quite a lot to digest, so I've divided it into two parts for ease of reading. Part 1 on the trains is below; Part 2 on the buses here.

Geelong Railway Station (via Wikipedia)

Firstly, the stopping patterns for the Geelong line are much better than I expected. It was really quite up-in-the-air as to whether Geelong trains would stop at Sunshine, thus providing a quicker connection to the Sunbury line and to Ballarat services than if they just stopped at Footscray. From the way PTV and the government were talking over the last few years, I strongly suspected they wouldn't - but the new timetable shows that most Geelong trains will stop at Sunshine, which is great to hear. Some express services won't, but that's perfectly fine.

Geelong's new 20-minute inter-peak service also starts with the opening of the new line, which is great to see - it would have been impossible while they were sharing tracks with Metro. It really makes catching the train a much more flexible option for more people, and since about half of them will start at Waurn Ponds (the other half starting at South Geelong) this adds up to a pretty usable suburban network for getting from one side of Geelong to the other, too.

Deer Park Railway Park (via Wikipedia)

Even better, many Geelong trains will also stop at Deer Park. Some of you will know that I used to live in Deer Park, and given how densely populated it is and how close it is to the city, its train service has historically been appalling - only one train every two hours in between peaks, as half of Ballarat-line trains skipped it. Compared to some suburbs in the East, which have electrified trains every ten minutes, it just wasn't good enough. From the talk over the last few years it didn't look like RRL would change anything, either - but I am delighted to have been wrong about this.

It looks like Geelong-line trains will do the same as Ballarat trains did, with about half of them stopping at Deer Park (and one or two stopping at Ardeer). This combines with changes to the Ballarat line - almost all Ballarat services will now stop at Deer Park (except expresses - again, totally reasonable) and there will now be additional half-hourly services that start at Bacchus Marsh, which will also stop at Deer Park. The two lines together add up to an excellent frequency for Deer Park, and while its neighbours Ardeer and Rockbank haven't fared quite so well, this makes sense - Ardeer gets the Ballarat improvements but not the Geelong, and most patrons are close enough to Sunshine or Albion to use Metro trains anyway; and Rockbank simply doesn't have the numbers to justify better service.

Ballarat Railway Station in 2013

While everywhere from Bacchus Marsh inwards gets a lot better service, there aren't many improvements for Ballarat itself. The daytime frequency remains roughly hourly, although it is good to see late-night services have improved - they've added an extra service back to the city at 2200 on weeknights, and have rejigged things in the other direction so the 2154 from Melbourne is moved to 2125 and a 2225 service is added. This is a fairly small and cheap change, but it will make a big difference in making the system more usable - people will be able to actually attend evening events in either city and go home afterwards, without having to drive or spend the night. Ideally, you'd like to see the 2330-ish train from Melbourne that exists on Friday and Saturday nights extended to the other nights of the week, but hey - one step at a time.

Similarly - it's great to see the improvement to Bacchus Marsh's frequency but ideally you'd want that to be extended to Ballarat itself - if Geelong can justify a 20-minute frequency then surely Ballarat can justify a 30-minute frequency. The fact that much of the line is single track does make things difficult, as it always has, but this is long overdue to be addressed. The plan is to add another crossing loop just west of Bacchus Marsh, which would be helpful, and other small bits and pieces are constantly being looked at, but in the long term only full duplication will do.

Also on the Ballarat line, there has been a slight rejig of the Ararat timetable, so that the first train from Ararat gets to Ballarat at 0809 instead of 0826 as it currently does. This may not seem like a big deal, but it means people who start work at 0830 can do so more easily. There was also historically an issue whereby the Buninyong bus (which goes out to the University at Mt Helen, and is therefore the bus a lot of people want to catch) left at 0823, so you couldn't use the Ararat train to (reliably) get to the Uni before 0900 - there was a bus at 0840 which arrives at exactly 0900 but that cuts it a bit fine for most. This change to the train timetable would solve that...if it weren't for the simultaneous changes to the bus timetable. More on that in Part 2.

Sadly, the LEAST depressing photo of Bendigo Railway Station I could find (via Wikipedia)

The Bendigo line doesn't seem to really have any significant changes, at this stage (although I'm not intimately familiar with their timetable as I rarely use the line). It is worth noting that Bendigo-line trains do not currently stop at Sunshine, to connect with Metro or Ballarat trains, and it was hoped that this might change with the introduction of Regional Rail Link, especially with the added bonus of connecting with Geelong trains. Sadly this isn't the case, but I suppose it's something we can push for in future.

It's also worth pointing out that there used to be a heap of padding in the timetables, which was introduced when trains started using the new tracks between Footscray and Southern Cross. It added a heap of extra time between those two stations, supposedly to compensate for lower speed limits while the track was bedded in, but which mostly had the effect of making their stats look better than they really were; when they inevitably crossed this section quicker than they were timetabled to, it made up time they'd lost further down the line. In any case, this has now been removed and the timetable now reflects the actual journey times.

Overall I'm really very happy with the way things have turned out here. The decisions made around stopping patterns are great, and while the Geelong line gotten the bulk of the improvements, the changes to the Ballarat line are very sensible. There are a few things that I would've liked to see changed - improved inter-peak frequency on the Ballarat line, Bendigo trains stopping at Sunshine, etc - but these are long-standing issues, and there's nothing stopping us from fixing them in the coming years.

I am distinctly less happy, however, with the changes to buses. Part 2 is here