Population ponzi crush-loads V/Line trains

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By Leith van Onselen

Remember this chart? It shows that Victoria’s population surged by an all-time high 127,500 people in the year to September 2016:

And remember how the Liberal opposition pledged to shift Melbourne’s population growth to Victoria’s regions in a bid to take pressure off both housing and infrastructure in Melbourne?

Well, it appears the State Opposition’s plan has already hit a major snag, with regional V/Line passenger train services experiencing overloading as population growth swells throughout the regional cities linking to Melbourne. From The Age:

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Victoria’s regional rail operator V/Line has an overcrowding problem, and the statistics show it is not going away, even as it adds 16 extra three-carriage trains to its fleet.

James Pinder, V/Line’s CEO, admitted in state parliament on Thursday that as quickly as its manufacturer Bombardier builds a new VLocity train, new passengers fill it.

“We’re adding one train a month, one train every six weeks to our fleet, but that capacity gets absorbed very quickly,” Mr Pinder said.

V/Line publishes new figures each month that show which of its peak-hour services are at 100 per cent capacity or more. March’s numbers reveal standing room-only has become the new normal for many commuters…

At the parliamentary inquiry, Mr Pinder suggested crowded carriages were less a growth phase than a permanent change in character from regional to commuter belt service for V/Line’s busiest lines.

“Standing on V/Line trains is not something that Victorians are used to,” he said.

“Our railway and our region and our state is changing. More and more people are coming to live in Victoria, our network is carrying more and more people and we are on a transformational journey…

Jeroen Weimar, Public Transport Victoria’s chief executive, told the inquiry regional rail patronage was growing faster than any other mode in the state, including trams and metropolitan trains.

“We are seeing a level of ridership on the network that we really have not seen before,” Mr Weimar said…

Having to stand all the way to Gippsland means much more than tired feet, she says. It is a drain on productivity and even quality of life.

“There’s this idyllic dream that is sold to a lot of people; move to a regional area and you could commute in an hour and work or read while you travel, but it’s really hard to work on your laptop if you’re standing.”

Packed metro trains and trams. Packed regional trains. Packed roads. Packed inner city schools. Packed hospitals. Unaffordable housing. Seriously, where is the benefit for incumbent residents from running a mass immigration ‘Big Australia’ program?

The federal government must slash Australia’s permanent migrant intake – the driver of Australia’s world-beating population growth – from 200,000 currently to the historical average of around 70,000:

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Our living standards depend on it.

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About the author
Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness. Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.