The Shepparton Line will be upgraded to 9 return trains every weekday, starting on 23 August, and the timetables have recently been published online. Unfortunately they leave a lot to be desired.
Let's start on a positive note. It is great to see the government investing in upgrading the Shepparton Line to enable more trains to run, and then following through with the funding to actually run those trains.
Shepparton is a decent-sized regional city, and it's growing fast - it deserves a fast and frequent public transport link to Melbourne. And 9 return trips per day is a big step up from the current 5, equating to roughly one train every 2 hours, which should mean a very usable service.
However.
Increasing frequencies helps a lot, but particularly when it's less than hourly, the specific times can matter a lot too. And the specific times of the Shepparton trains seem like they will hamper how useful they could be.
Let's imagine someone from Shepparton, or somewhere along the line, wants to commute to Melbourne for work or study. It is quite a long distance, but there will be people willing to do it - particularly if it's only 1-2 days a week, or perhaps a quarterly meeting or training day. So it still makes sense to ensure the timetable works for that kind of trip.
Getting to Melbourne is ok. There's a train that gets to Southern Cross at 0759 - this is maybe a little earlier than ideal for a CBD commuter who starts at 9am, but a. better to be too early than too late, and b. it enables trips to workplaces (or campuses) slightly outside the CBD, eg Richmond or Parkville. So, fine.
The next train arrives at 0911, which is obviously too late for a CBD office job, but works well for a day of shopping or similar, or maybe a 10am lecture. It also gets to Broadmeadows at 0839, which is probably workable for some jobs near the station. So again, fine.
But getting home is a very different story. The first train after 5pm is at 1703, which is going to be too early for basically anyone to get to Southern Cross - and it gets to North Melbourne at 1708, which will be equally impossible for anyone coming from Parkville. Miss it, and the next train all the way back to Shepparton is at 1907 - a hell of a wait.
There is an option filling that gap - a train to Seymour at 1733, which connects to a coach to Shepparton. This will be accessible to many more people, and presumably become the main commuter train for people who live in Shepparton...so why isn't it the train that goes all the way through?
It's also worth imagining someone doing the reverse-commute to Shepparton - someone from Melbourne, or perhaps somewhere like Seymour, coming to Shepparton for work or study. This kind of trip seems to be counter-intuitive to a lot of people, and I don't know if it's currently a big thing in Shepparton, but it absolutely happens elsewhere - I did it from Deer Park to Ballarat for a while, and the trains were always well-patronised, while the City of Greater Bendigo says 10% more passengers arrive at Bendigo Station in the mornings than leave. So it's definitely something a well-constructed timetable should enable.
So let's imagine a student or staff member of the La Trobe Shepparton Campus - which is pretty close to the station. The first train of the day is timetabled to arrive at 0852. Assuming it's on time, and Google Maps' estimated walking time of 10 minutes is accurate, you're going to be 2 minutes late every day.
Coming home, when 5 o'clock strikes it's a mad dash to the station to try and catch the 1710 train. If you miss it, it's a bit of a wait till the 1815 coach to Seymour - or an even longer wait for the 2038 train.
Now, if you are lucky, and determined, there might be ways to make this timetable work. For a Melbourne commuter, maybe you can convince your boss to switch you to an 8.30 to 4.30 workday - for a Shepparton commuter, maybe your boss won't sweat you being a few minutes late in the morning and leaving a few minutes early in the evening, as long as you're getting the work done. But then again, maybe not - and the point is it shouldn't be necessary. Public transport services should be designed to make your life easier, not harder.
Of course, the people who drew up these timetables will not have done so in a vacuum. They are trying to squeeze these trains onto a network that is pretty full at peak times, and I don't necessarily know exactly what constraints they faced. But I feel like these problems are all solvable, and I would like to propose these solutions:
1. Swap the 1703 and 1733 trains
Make the 1733 the train that goes all the way through to Shepparton, and the 1703 the one that terminates at Seymour with a coach connection.
These trains will have been slotted between the peak hour Craigieburn Line trains, so actually changing their times might be difficult - but swapping them over shouldn't be.
2. Bring the first Shepparton arrival of the day forward by about 30 minutes
This train leaves Melbourne at 0617, when the Craigieburn Line is relatively quiet - you still have to plan around the Metro trains, but it's a lot easier. Bumping it back by around 30 minutes, whenever there's a path available, should surely be doable.
If it arrives a bit before 0830, that not only makes the La Trobe commute a lot easier, it puts many more workplaces within range by 9am - such as the library or council offices on the opposite side of the CBD.
3. Push the 1710 train back by about 30 minutes
As above only in reverse - it gets to Melbourne after the evening peak, so again it should be possible.
Hopefully it'll be possible to make these changes - maybe not for the 23 August commencement date, but the next time they do a timetable change in January or something.
But a larger point to make is - are V/Line or the Department of Transport conducting analyses like this - or a more professional version with GIS or whatever - when they write timetables? And if not, why not?
Ultimately the biggest factors are going to be big-dollar items - how much infrastructure have you built, what frequency are you funded to run. So, credit to the government for making those investments. But these kinds of details really do matter for getting the most out of that investment, and providing a railway that is maximally useful to the people that matter most - the travelling public.
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