Long-suffering rail passengers who use the dilapidated, ageing trains on the Warrnambool-Melbourne line have been kicked in the guts again by politicians on both sides of the house.
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As train carriages decades old continue to rattle up and down the line between the two cities Labor and the Coalition government have announced that they will spend millions on new train carriages for country Victorians, except those who call south-west Victoria home.
On Wednesday, Labor committed almost $1 billion for 20 new VLocity V/Line carriages for regional lines while the incumbent Napthine government is also carrying out a $260 million order for 43 VLocity carriages for the Ballarat, Bendigo, Geelong, Seymour and Traralgon lines.
The carriages on the Geelong line are already in operation but they can’t pass beyond Waurn Ponds because the ageing tracks aren’t compatible with the modern carriages.
Some of the logic behind this week’s announcements is understandable in that larger centres like Ballarat and Geelong have a greater need because they are growing faster and have closer commuter ties to Melbourne.
But many passengers who use the line between Warrnambool would be asking when is the south-west’s time going to come?
The carriages passengers from this region have to use are on average 30 years old and are restricted to a maximum speed of 115km/h because of the age of the rails.
The fact is that major works costing hundreds of millions of dollars would have to be undertaken on the Warrnambool-Melbourne line to bring it up to speed and that money will not be forthcoming for a long time yet.
The bureaucrats will tell you that Warrnambool has to grow much bigger before it can have a state-of-the-art rail connection to Melbourne.
The same goes for an upgraded Princes Highway, don’t hold your breath for that either.
The irony of course is that Warrnambool would grow a great deal faster if its transport connections were of the same standard as those in marginal seats around the state, but that’s an argument that continues to fall on deaf ears in Spring Street.