Save the Overland (Part 2)

The Overland leaving Ararat Station

The historic Overland is struggling to survive - dependant on government subsidies that it cannot rely on indefinitely. Yesterday I discussed why the Overland declined, why this mirrored other rail services in Victoria, and how those other services turned things around - with a bold strategic vision, and the funding to back it up. It should by now be abundantly clear to everyone involved with Victorian rail that if you build it, they will come - serious investments will be rewarded with increased passenger numbers, so rather than just small bandaid measures to keep the Overland on life support, we need to treat it with the same seriousness as any other line.

We don't need to go for a big shiny HSR project, we can do this with conventional rail (via BZE)

Now, before we get ahead of ourselves, we need to be realistic about what is achievable. As much as I would love for Melbourne-Sydney-Brisbane HSR to be followed by Melbourne-Adelaide HSR, this is not likely to happen for the foreseeable future; all that's on the table is to do basic, conventional rail - but do it well. While this will likely attract some passengers from the Melbourne-Adelaide flight market - notably, people who strongly prefer not to fly, or who strongly prefer to take the train, but currently find it impractical - it's not going to take a huge percentage of the total. The real gains will come from people who currently drive along this route - and especially those who live partway along the route (some of whom currently fly).

An illustrative example; if you live in Ararat and want to go to Adelaide, flying takes roughly 6-6.5 hours - including the time it takes to get from Ararat to Tullamarine, check-in and security, and getting from Adelaide airport to the CBD. Driving takes about the same (including brief stops for fuel and stretching of legs). The Overland takes about 7 hours - a bit slower, but close enough that other factors (like comfort, price, the stress of driving) can compensate. If you look at Horsham, the time equation shifts away from flying and towards driving and the train. If you look at Ballarat, it's quicker to get to the airport, longer to drive, and longer again to take the Overland (since we need to take a V/Line train to Ararat and wait about half an hour for the connection).

The Overland takes about 7hrs Ararat-Adelaide - faster than the 9hrs on multiple buses

However, the Overland captures almost none of these trips - even from Ararat and Horsham - because the frequency is so low. There's dozens of flights between Melbourne and Adelaide each day, and of course you can drive whenever you like - but with a train that only runs once every few days, the odds of it running when you want it are minuscule.

So the first order of business - in order for it to be usable for a greater number of trips, the Overland must run at least once a day in each direction. This is by far the most important thing they need to do.

It is worth noting that this frequency is not just going to cater for trips from regional Victoria to Adelaide (or indeed to other South Australian destinations like Murray Bridge, where it's even more time-competitive). It would also form a key plank of an intra-state service for western Victoria - giving places like Stawell, Horsham, Nhill and Kaniva a much more frequent rail service to Melbourne. Ideally, you'd combine the Overland with short-run trains (eg terminating at Horsham) and the existing coaches to give these closer cities a proper many-services-per-day frequency, giving them more choice of when to travel, reducing waiting times and therefore making it even more competitive with driving. These passengers would constitute a not-insignificant part of your passenger base.

Horsham needs much more frequent rail services (via Wikimedia Commons)

But to take a more serious chunk out of the number of cars driving along this corridor, and especially to take a bit of a bite out of the numbers flying, the Overland needs to get faster.

Again, we don't need proper HSR, we just need slightly higher top speeds and acceleration to chip away at the travel times - in short, we need something along the lines of a modified VLocity. It'd need to be Standard Gauge, obviously, but also include buffet(s) and nicer seats. The standard Overland consist is about 6 carriages, so you could either do it as a special six-carriage VLocity or two three-carriage VLos - for example, one for Economy and one for First Class (or Red and Premium Red as they're currently branded). You would of course need a few sets, to run the trains frequently.

A modified VLocity (or similar) could provide a much faster Overland service (via Wikimedia Commons)

There would also need to be some work done to the infrastructure to support this. Precisely what needs to be done - or at least what the highest priorities are - is something that a consultant would need to write a lengthy report on, so it's a bit beyond me. But the track itself is already of a pretty high standard, so the main impediments are the number of level crossings that aren't adequately protected, the signalling system, and potentially the need for some more crossing loops. Converting the whole line to be 160km/h-capable would be a huge task, and very hard to justify in the short term - but incremental improvements focused on where you get the most value (eg the Horsham-Ararat section, where you'd want to run regular V/Line services as well) would be a great start.

Many of the level crossings do not have active protection, they just have signs (source)

These two fundamental improvements to speed and frequency are the starting point - what's needed to make the Overland a seriously viable travel option for a large number of people, and therefore to give it a decent chance to capture a respectable share of the market. But what could be done to make it even better, to take an even larger share of the market on its own merits - or provide a more serious alternative if we get to the point where governments start restricting domestic flights due to their carbon emissions?

Google automatically picks the shortest route between stations, so it thinks the Overland already goes via Ballarat

It's a very substantial project that would require a big realignment of V/Line's existing operations, so it's not going to happen overnight - but in the medium term, the Overland should return to its direct route via Ballarat.

The first step towards this would be do to what the Rail Futures Institute have called for in their InterCity plan - Standardise the line between Ararat and Ballarat, so that V/Line can run SG shuttles from Ballarat to Horsham and Hamilton. Combined with the Standardisation of the direct Ballarat-Geelong line as part of the Murray Basin Rail Project for freight (hopefully), this would allow the Overland to travel from Melbourne to northern Geelong to Ballarat to Ararat. Despite looking quite zigzaggy, this is actually 18km shorter than the Geelong-Maroona route it takes now; so it represents both a marginal time saving overall, and an opportunity to access another large source of passengers.

Phase 1 of RFI's InterCity plan, including Standardisation of the Ararat line (source)

The second step would be to Standardise the direct Ballarat-Melbourne line, which is a much bigger undertaking - being a busier line, which means shutdowns are more costly and more rolling stock needs to be converted to run the services. But the infrastructure, at least, can be chipped away at. From this point on, every bit of trackwork that happens on this line - and there's going to be a lot over the next few years, whether it's duplication works or standard maintenance - should be done with gauge-convertible sleepers. Once a substantial portion of the sleepers have been done in this ad hoc fashion, it becomes much quicker and easier to switch the rail over when the time comes. Doing this would allow the Overland to run a through service direct to Melbourne, on high-quality tracks that are capable of 160km/h - cutting journey times even further. (It would also allow the Horsham and Hamilton trains to run as through services instead of shuttles).

The Overland at Ballarat in 1965 (via Weston Langford)

At the other end, the big constraint is the slow and indirect path through the Adelaide Hills. This would take some fairly substantial tunnelling to solve, which would not be cheap. On the other hand, it would benefit interstate freight trains as well, not to mention their own regional passenger trains if they wanted to bring them back - and of course they did something similar for the roads a few years ago, so it's not outside the realms of possibility for a future improvement.

The Heysen road tunnels through the Adelaide Hills (via Wikimedia Commons)

To sum up, the first steps to making the Overland a viable and competitive travel option are:
 - make it run once a day in each direction
 - make it run a little bit faster

Beyond that, the bigger changes needed to make it a serious alternative to flying, for the carbon-conscious or the carbon-taxed:
 - make it more direct
 - make it a lot faster

Now - all of this, even the relatively low-hanging fruit, will cost money. Quite a lot of money. So who's going to spend it? The Victorian government? The SA or Federal governments? The private operator, Journey Beyond?

It seems to me very unlikely that Journey Beyond will be willing to spend anything much on the Overland. The impression that I get is that they would be quite happy to be rid of it, so they can focus on their core cruise-train model with the Ghan, the Indian Pacific, and their new train the Great Southern. And frankly, you'd have to question a private operator like this benefiting so handsomely from government expenditure.

The Indian Pacific at Cook

The answer, I think, is some form of cooperative re-nationalisation - it's not a cruise train, it's public transport, and should be treated as such. For example, the Victorian government could bring it in under V/Line and buy the new rolling stock; the SA government could chip in part of the operating costs; and the Federal government could chip in on some of the infrastructure. All of which is of course quite politically difficult.

Implementing a plan like this would take time - and trains like this are really, really hard to get back once they're lost. So for the time being, I am very much in support of the Victorian government continuing to provide these small subsidies to keep it ticking over for another year. It does provide a vital lifeline for many people who cannot drive or fly, and we don't want to lose that. (I would however prefer they do it for 2-3 years at a time and not leave renewal to the last minute, to provide certainty for people booking advance tickets, but that's another story).

But they can't keep kicking the can down the road forever. We've seen time and time again that serious investment into a competitive service will be rewarded with passenger numbers. All our governments need to work out a strategic vision for what the Overland could be, and how it would fit in with other freight and passenger services - and then they need to invest in making it a reality.