PT seems to have become an issue in the papers again recently, with reports coming out that Melbourne’s PT system isn’t working. (Gee, who’da thunk it…)

I’m not an expert on these things, but having visited a few cities with what I would consider working public transport systems, I have to say there’s a bit of a gaping hole in Melbourne’s train network… let’s take a couple of examples:

Berlin:

London:

Melbourne:

What’s the difference? London and Berlin both have LOOPS. That’s right, the working train networks aren’t just a star, in fact the different lines cross each other all over the place. (gad, even Sydney has that!) Whereas in Melbourne, let’s say you wanted to get from Camberwell to Brighton Beach… let’s say we’ll rule out throwing yourself on the mercy of the disaster that is Melbourne buses, then you have to go ALL THE WAY into Richmond station and then out again. A trip that should be 10 minutes or so in a car probably gets to about 45 minutes or more on trains. Or what about getting from the airport to Glen Iris? Forget it.

So, just because I should be studying and procrastination is FUN!, let’s add a couple of meaningful loops to Melbourne’s train network: one where there used to be one years and years ago, (the “inner loop”), and one roughly where zone 1 becomes zone 2. For fun, why not throw in a rail line to the airport, because that’s overdue if anything ever is. Oh, and let’s electrify the track to Geelong, because damn, why not. So what do we get?

(red lines represent existing rail lines, green represent the ones I would build.)

Amount of common sense used: no more than most people should be equipped with; Likelihood of something like this actually happening: erm, maybe once Dubya gets his degree in rocket science from Cambridge… Isn’t this fun!

(In fact, there was talk of a train tunnel connecting Melbourne Uni to Southbank… how this benefits anyone other than Melbourne Uni students who want to go to Southbank beats me…)