Melbourne’s sardine can future revealed

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By Leith van Onselen

As Melbourne’s population surges by a projected 97,000 people a year to 8 million mid-century:

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Melbourne’s commuting future has been revealed, with new sardine-configuration trains to enter service from mid-2019. From The Age:

The days of getting a seat on a Melbourne train will soon be replaced by the kind of shoulder-to-shoulder commute people experience daily in mega-cities such as Tokyo.

Designs for a planned fleet of 65 new high-capacity trains that will enter service from mid-2019 reveal a radical change is in store for Melbourne train travellers.

The trains will be built to carry between 1200 and 2000 passengers each, depending on their configuration, and they will be designed to maximise standing room, with seats provided for just 30 to 40 per cent of passengers in a fully loaded train.

The bumper loads will be accommodated by enabling “standing passengers to safely travel at a density of up to six passengers per square metre”, technical documents seen by Fairfax Media say.

According to studies, this level of crowding is comparable to that experienced in the Tokyo metro.

By way of comparison, the city’s current fleet of trains are designed to comfortably fit 900 people and seat about two-thirds of them…

Public Transport Minister Jacinta Allan said that without larger trains and more services, passengers would be left stranded on platforms in peak hour.

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Sardine packed trains. More time stuck in traffic. Less affordable (and smaller) homes. Schools bursting at the seams. This is what “prosperity” looks like to immigration extremists like Peter Martin.

Of course, anyone with half a brain knows what is driving Melbourne’s falling livability: the federal government’s mass immigration program.

According to the Productivity Commission’s recent Migrant Intake into Australia report, Australia’s population is projected to grow to around 41 million mid-century under current mass immigration settings. This is roughly 14 million more people than would arrive into Australia under zero net overseas migration:

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Clearly, the best way to avert Melbourne’s looming infrastructure disaster, as well as maintain decent living standards, is for the the State Government to tap its federal counterpart on the shoulder and demand they slash Australia’s immigration program.

Sadly, the Turnbull Government this month announced that it would maintain Australia’s permanent migrant intake at a record 205,000 people a year in 2017-18 without a whiff of opposition from Labor or the fake Greens:

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Hence Melbourne’s living standards are destined to be crush-loaded into little tins for the foreseeable future.

And for what?

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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.