Metro Tunnel promises ‘more trains, more often’. But will it deliver?

The Metro Tunnel’s 2016 business case said the network-wide upgrades were necessary to take full advantage of the project and need to be completed to coincide with completion of the tunnel.

Public Transport Users Association spokesman Daniel Bowen said the relatively small upgrades should have been delivered.

“The Metro Tunnel is an opportunity to shake up the timetables and give Melbourne a vastly more usable train network,” he said. “Cutting them… means it will be more difficult to make the most of the capacity boost provided by this huge project.”

Bowen said that without the upgrades, Upfield would continue to have the most infrequent peak hour trains on the network and overcrowding would be a problem on the Craigieburn line.

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South Yarra station – which Dandenong trains will skip when the Metro Tunnel opens – could also be overwhelmed without the proposed turn-back, he said.

A 2022 Victorian Auditor-General’s Office report revealed that Rail Projects Victoria had dropped $236 million worth of wider network enhancements, including a turn-back and some signalling upgrades to offset cost blowouts in the project.

It had saved another $91 million by reducing its rollout of high-capacity signalling by 27 kilometres, or by about a third.

High-capacity signalling – which allows trains to run closer together – has only been installed between West Footscray and Westall, rather than between Watergardens and Westall.

In August, The Age revealed the government had agreed to cut the Park Street Link tram extension from the Metro Tunnel works due to insufficient funding.

With the Metro Tunnel set to take passengers off Swanston Street trams, the 300-metre extension on Park Street in South Melbourne would have redirected route 5 and 64 trams along Clarendon and Spencer streets.

A small connection from Elizabeth Street onto Flinders Street also appears to have been dropped. That would have allowed route 19 and 59 to continue to Jolimont and route 57 to Melbourne Park instead of turning around at Elizabeth Street.

Rail Futures Institute president John Hearsch said axing the Park Street Link was “just absurd” given the benefits it would provide to the tram network.

“The people who did the original [Metro Tunnel] design knew what they were doing and what was needed to optimise it so you get some bang for your buck,” he said. “So what’s come since doesn’t reflect very well on the department.”

Hearsch said the government should publish its proposed network timetables now.

A proposed service plan in the Metro Tunnel business case for day 1 operations in 2026 showed peak hour trains running every 10 minutes on the Upfield Line (compared to 15 to 20 minutes currently), less than every 4 minutes on the Craigieburn Line from Essendon (compared to every 6 minutes), and every 5 minutes from Werribee (compared to every 10 minutes).

A state government spokesperson said the Metro Tunnel timetable was still being finalised but it would enable turn-up-and-go services for Cranbourne, Pakenham and Sunbury trains.

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Opening the tunnel was a first step towards adding more services across the network and improving frequency on the Craigieburn and Upfield lines, they said.

The government would wait to see how the Metro Tunnel affected travel patterns before changing the tram network, the spokesperson said.

Bowen said infrequent off-peak service was the most glaring issue on the network and could be fixed without any new infrastructure.

“People spend too much time waiting for trains, including waits of 40 minutes on Sunday mornings on about half the Metro lines. In Sydney, the most you’ll wait for a train at any time of day is 15 minutes,” he said.

The new Sydney Metro has frequencies of every four minutes during peak times, five minutes during the day on weekdays and 10 minutes at all other times, while most other train stations across Sydney have services at least every 10 minutes all day, every day.

In Melbourne, Frankston is the only line that currently has 10 minutes all-day frequency.