Rail action group wants more carriages on north-east line trains

However, restricted train sizes have resulted in ongoing overcrowding of passenger services especially on weekends.

In response, the Victorian Government has pointed to significant recent investment in the north-east line.

Since the introduction of regional capped fares, V/Line’s overcrowding ‘fixes’ have included introducing extra weekend trains and reserved-only seating.

Many travellers seeking the security of knowing they will have a seat now book weeks ahead.

As this practice becomes the norm, travellers with short-term or urgent travel needs are thereby not always guaranteed a seat.

VLine’s current solution, to address insufficient train seating capacity, has been to bring in back-up road coaches.

A BRAG spokesperson said each weekend many trains were supported by back-up coaches potentially costing hundreds of thousands of dollars per annum.

“Yes, a fix of sorts, but is it an efficient use of public resources?” the spokesperson said.

“Creating more capacity on north-east line services has long been BRAG’s response when incidents of overcrowding have become media stories.

“In the past our response has been for the government to acquire more carriages, the obvious and most direct approach.

“Based on information supplied by the Rail Futures Institute, we now propose inserting a fourth ‘seating-only’ car into three of the six existing (north-east line) train sets.

“There are 152 seats in each of the existing three car train sets.

“By simply inserting a fourth seating-only car to a three-car VLocity train set raises seating capacity to around 230, a 50 per cent increase.

“The estimated short-term cost of acquiring three powered intermediate seating-only carriages for the line is advised by RFI as being around $22 million.

“To support operation of four-car train sets, the existing VLocity maintenance facility at Dynon (Melbourne) would require modification to accommodate train lengths up to four cars.

“The accumulation of savings from dispensing with back-up coaches (would be) a balancing positive outcome.”

A government spokesperson said it had made significant investments to improve services along the Albury (north-east) line, including introducing modern VLocity trains and delivering major upgrades to the track, bridges, level crossings and stabling at Albury Station.

“We’ve also given Albury line passengers more options to get where they need to go, with two weekend train services and more coach options added to the timetable following the introduction of cheaper fares,” the spokesperson said.

“The Labor Government is transforming the way Victorians travel across the state, with passengers already saving around $150 million since the introduction of the regional fare cap.”