The Victorian state opposition has announced it will spend $487 million extending Melbourne’s metropolitan train network to Clyde if it wins the election in November, following on from its recent commitment of $32 million to extend V/Line passenger services on the Maryborough Line.
Along with the extension of the Cranbourne Line to Clyde, funds for Mildura Line upgrades, and an extension V/Line train services to Horsham and Hamilton will be on the cards, the Liberal-Nationals opposition has claimed, if voted in next election.
State opposition leader Matthew Guy said a five-kilometre extension of electrified double line from Cranbourne to Cranbourne East and terminating at Clyde would cost close to half a billion dollars.
“Melbourne is jam packed and growing by around 120,000 people a year,” Guy said. “We need to ease the population squeeze which is why I am so focused on planning for population growth so every Victorian can enjoy living in their communities.
“This rail extension, along with our plan to remove intersections at Thompsons Road and Western Port Highway in Lyndhurst as well as Hall Road and Western Port Highway, Cranbourne West will also help bust local congestion.”
No new level crossings would be built, he said, with grade separations to be established at intersections on the South Gippsland Highway, Narre Warren-Cranbourne Road, Broad Oak Drive and Berwick-Cranbourne Road.
Construction would get under way in 2019 and be completed by 2022 under the Opposition’s plan.
“Labor has been in government for 14 of the last 18 years and has consistently taken local people in this area for granted,” shadow transport minister David Davis said.
“When Daniel Andrews tore up the East West Link contract and cost taxpayers $1.3 billion in compensation, that money could have been better spent on building this rail extension three years ago.”
Both Labor and the Liberals have in the past made commitments to extending the line out to Clyde, to no avail. The area’s quickly expanding population remains without accessible train connections. It is expected that 240,000 people will live in the Cranbourne East/Clyde area by 2025.
If the population in the Cranbourne East – Clyde area increases to 240,000 and 5% of these people use the train services, where are these trains going to go? They are not going to fit on the line between Dandenong and Caulfield. The line that was duplicated in 1891 and seems to be doomed to congestion forever.
Good to see the state government actually doing something but In particular, the rail crossing removal program made no provision for future expansion in the number of passenger tracks or freight tracks on any corridors. Freight for the SE is for ever more strangled, “shunted” to road.
Fiddlesticks, the line originally went to Yarram, later cut back to Leongatha.
Volunteers ran the Nyora to Leongatha section until a few years ago and the section in between near Koo-Wee-Rup was pulled up to allow a rail trail.
Now it’s going to cost half a bill to reinstate it to Clyde? Albeit an electrified service.
I think the Kennett years was too keen to abandon the Great Southern Railway. And now the Libs are going to reinstate it in a fit of chest beating?
I suppose any rail is good however ironic the rebuilding.
And the Avoca line has been opened three times in about 120 years.