When my mum wanted me to buy one of those off-the-plan apartments in North Melbourne, I remember one of the selling points being that it would be really close to the soon-to-be-developed Parkville station. That was nearly 8 years ago, and there is still no Parkville station (though to my mum's credit, the apartment probably would have made money since it's so close to Melbourne University and not too far from RMIT Uni's CBD campus, so I wouldn't have had too much trouble finding tenants).
Nico told me about some new stations that would be built, and that was also years ago and still hasn't happened. But it seems that we're finally getting a resolution to one of the biggest problems our current train network has: all roads lead to Rome - or in this case Flinders St Station / the city loop in general.
Here's the current map, which I grabbed off PTV's website today: https://www.ptv.vic.gov.au/getting-around/maps/
If you look closely, you'll see that all the train lines join up in the middle, with Flinders St station being a giant bottleneck.
Even the game Mini Metro has an achievement for it.
A lot of the infrastructure around Melbourne's train network is quite old, and it's not that rare to have various faults on some of the train lines. When one of those faults is in the "city loop" (Flinders St, Southern Cross, Flagstaff, Melbourne Central, Parliament), the entire train network experiences significant delays for hours.
And that doesn't even touch on the problems that you have co-ordinating trains going in and out of the loop - so one train being delayed can cause a butterfly effect of issues, depending on which line it is, as many of the platforms at Flinders St are shared between multiple train lines. I've lost count of the number of times I've been waiting for a train at Flinders, only to be told to run to another platform, because my train has been moved there. Because I'm usually reading or something, I normally miss the initial announcements, so by the time I'm at the other platform, the train is gone, and I end up having to go back to the original platform and waiting another 20 minutes for the next train. #firstWorldProblems
So when I heard about the new Metro Tunnel that's being built, I was super happy.
Despite North Melbourne station being renamed to West Melbourne station, to make room for the new North Melbourne station that's being constructed, I'm really excited about the new stations. And look, that Parkville station that was mentioned to me years ago is back on the map!
The idea behind it is to offer an alternative route through the CBD for trains. Passengers can cross from one to the other via Melbourne Central - State Library, or Flinders St - Town Hall, and having a station near St Kilda Rd will be really nice as there are a lot of companies located around there (though I don't think the train station is quite that far down St Kilda Rd), not to mention a couple of large high schools.
Based on my extensive civil planning skills (*cough* playing Cities: Skylines *cough*), train lines make people happy!
(If you ignore the part where building a train station makes the people in the immediate vicinity unhappy, due to the noise pollution.)
It was definitely one of the most important factors for me when choosing a place to rent / buy, as I don't particularly like driving places and I don't like how hard it is to predict when a tram / bus is going to arrive.
Sadly, there were some casualties in this project. The Swanston St KFC had to close down, but also the Swanston St McDonald's, which has always been an icon for me. I don't know how long it has been like this, but the sign above it actually says "Macca's", because that's slang for McDonald's in Australia.
I've spent so much time there, and at the KFC a few stores down, it feels weird not seeing them there anymore (the whole area is boarded up at the moment, I assume to build the tunnel between Flinders St station and the new Town Hall station). It's all for the greater good (the greater good), so I can't complain. Melbourne is growing, and it would be nice to have a train system that grows with it.
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