As regional cities around Victoria celebrate up to 10 extra train services each per week, the Border has been snubbed – again.
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Albury’s train line uses its own rail gauge, which Public Transport Minister Jacinta Allan said would not accommodate the same trains as the other lines that benefited from a major announcement on Monday.
She said the Victorian government was “putting people first” by providing more trains and a total of more than 80 services to Geelong, Bendigo, Ballarat and Traralgon.
“In the recent budget, we also put aside some funding ($15 million of the state’s total $1.3 billion investment) to reconfigure and upgrade the carriages on the North East line,” Ms Allan said.
“They have their own dedicated fleet of train carriages.
“We need to do that first before we can look at how additional services might be provided on that line.”
Border Rail Action Group convenor Bill Traill said the minister’s reasoning was “indefensible”.
“There’s absolutely no technical problems whatsoever, except a relatively simple change of bogies that would cost a few hundred thousand dollars,” he said.
“The usual suspects missed out, the usual suspects were compensated – for what, I don’t know.”
The usual suspects missed out, the usual suspects were compensated.
- BRAG convenor Bill Traill
The rail advocate was frustrated that Monday’s announcement gave priority to towns with much smaller populations than the Border.
A new V/Line timetable would be released on November 28.
Ms Allan said the government was adding train services as quickly as possible.
“Across the regional network, there is a desire to see more services – what we’re committed to doing is putting on those services when we can, when we’ve got the extra rolling stock coming off the production line,” she said.
“There’s no doubt there’s been some challenges across the V/Line network over the course of this year and that partly comes from running a very large network across regional areas.
“We’re dedicated to addressing those issues from a safety perspective.”
Ovens Valley MLA Tim McCurdy said he was “gobsmacked” North East rail users were ignored.
“It is quite simply unbelievable that the North East has been completely excluded from receiving not even one extra service – how is it possible that this line and its long-suffering passengers have missed out yet again?” he said.
“Public Transport Minister Jacinta Allan said the government was introducing 80 new train services each week to get people in regional Victoria home safer and sooner, but she forgot to add ‘not if you live in Wangaratta’.
“Ovens Valley residents have exactly the same needs as the rest of regional Victoria when it comes to rail travel.”
