A new station for Deer Park

Draft design for the new Deer Park Station (via LXRA)

A few weeks ago, LXRA announced that the removal of the Mount Derrimut Road level crossing and the revamp of Deer Park Station would be happening a year ahead of schedule - it'll still happen a bit after the Robinsons Road and Fitzgerald Road crossings, presumably to help manage local traffic during construction, but they're now aiming for 2024 instead of 2025. They've also released some draft designs for the new station, and consultation has just opened, so let's take a look. 

Looking northwest over the new station (via LXRA)

The basic layout reminds me a bit of Coburg - a fairly solid station from the ground up, rather than the more 'floating' designs we saw on CD9, only even more so than Coburg because the tracks at the western end are resting directly on an embankment rather than on pylons. It also seems to have a similar "central atrium with staircases branching off either side" thing to Coburg, though from what I can tell these seem to be entirely separate from ground level (rather than branching off at the mezzanine after a shared section). 

The existing station is hard to access from the southwest

This means that passengers from the southwest would no longer need to walk all the way to the road and then backtrack, as they do now - so it'd be an improvement. But having both staircases (and the ramps, and the lifts) point right at the same central entrance point means you effectively only get one entrance, despite the expense of two staircases. A much better layout would be to point these two staircases away from each other, so that it would shorten the walking distance from different directions, essentially expanding the pedestrian catchment of the station. 

The footpaths south of the station are pretty random (via LXRA)

While the staircase thing could be classed as "suboptimal", the footpaths on these renders are best described as "nonsensical". This is sadly par for the course - whether it's a station forecourt or a public park in a new housing estate, it's as though nobody who designs footpaths has ever actually walked on one before. What a footpath should do is anticipate the "desire lines" of future walkers - figure out where they're likely to be coming from and going to, draw a direct line between them (consolidating nearby lines if need be) and put a footpath there. Instead what seems to happen is they try to be quirky, and carve up the green space with crooked paths that go nowhere and serve no purpose. 

The planned paths don't overlap much with desire lines (modified from LXRA)

Small changes would give more direct paths AND more green space (modified from LXRA)

Connectivity to local buses seems to be marginally worse than before - the station is set slightly westward from the existing location, and it looks like a person walking from the stops on Tilburn Road would have to walk about 100m further (comparing the existing myki line to the future bottom of the stairs). But I feel like that was pretty much unavoidable - the whole "straddle the road" thing I've suggested for other stations would be a bad idea here, because the bus stops are basically the only thing on the eastern side of Mount Derrimut Road. Better to keep the station as close to as many houses as possible. Nonetheless there's a long-term ambition for a shared-use path along Tilburn, and LXRA seem to be doing small bits of this within the envelopes of their crossing removals, so I hope there's a good bike/ped crossing of Mount Derrimut Rd. 

There's a wide path under the viaduct; a good crossing is a must (via LXRA)

The renders are very high-level, but it looks as though there is a bunch of covered space on the northern side of the station - I haven't seen any clear explanation for this from LXRA, but the speculation on Twitter is that it's going to be some kind of food or retail space. Which would add nicely to the amenity of the station - it's always good to be able to grab a coffee before you get on your train. 

Looking southwest over the station (via LXRA)

It looks like there will be a decent amount of coverage on the citybound platform, but a lot less on the Melton-bound platform. Given that this is a constant battle with new stations, it's possibly not the worst outcome - but seriously, in the context of a project this big, it'd be pocket change to just provide shelter for the whole platform length, so why not just do it? 

There's a clear path for an extra track pair to the south of the viaduct (via LXRA)

Looking to the future, there is no indication of any provision for electric stanchions on the viaduct, although that's probably a limitation of the renders more than anything else. Hopefully they can make sure the design allows them to be easily added later. 

It's good that they've left a clear path for another track pair to come through to the south - this aligns with the space that was left under Anderson Rd during the Regional Rail Link project. They've put a car park there - I assume that won't present huge problems when the time comes, they'll just have part of the carpark underneath the beams. But it might be prudent to do some prep works from day one, siting the pylon locations and so on. 

Space was dug out (right) for a second track pair under Anderson Rd (via RRLA)

Overall I think the design of the station itself is a good step forward, and with some minor changes - particularly to the surrounding footpaths, which should hopefully be cheap and easy to achieve - it could be really great. Let's hope the final designs reflect these tweaks.