Melbourne Western Residents Demand Adequate Train Services
Melbourne's Western Residents have called for more frequent and reliable train services, following elongated delays in the Ballarat to Melbourne V/Line services which are leaving them stranded for hours.
Panashe Chikonyora 
Melbourne — Western Residents have called for more frequent and reliable train services, following elongated delays in the Ballarat to Melbourne V/Line services which are leaving them stranded for hours.
The action comes after passengers travelling from Ballarat towards Melbourne were left stranded for more than two hours on a rainy Monday morning, August 10, after a V/Line service was disrupted.
In a post made on the Mt Atkinson Advocacy Forum Facebook Page, a Mt Atkinson Resident, Jaksha Shah expressed concerns over the disruption which occurred along the Melton-Ballarat corridor, highlighting that the incident demonstrated the wider impact of unreliable public transport on Melbourne’s rapidly growing West.
Shah said the community has suffered from the impact of unreliable train services for more than a decade with no improvement.
Residents have began to question whether continued planning and development announcements would be enough to address the daily challenges commuters are facing, Shah said.
“After more than a decade of planning and another (AU)$152.7 million going into development work, Melbourne’s west needs more than another announcement. We need delivery.
"The standard we walk past is the standard we accept. This should not be an acceptable standard for Melbourne’s west," Shah said.
Melbourne’s western suburbs continue to experience rapid population growth and increased demand for public transport and residents say this disruption risks pushing more people into cars, adding pressure to the already congested roads across Melbourne’s western suburbs.
This latest disruption has renewed concerns about whether existing public transport infrastructure is keeping pace with the needs of Melbourne’s growing western suburbs.
Shah indicated that the residents are calling for the urgent electrification of the Melton rail line, improvement of train frequency and reliability, and for V/Line to be held accountable when services repeatedly fall below its own punctuality target.
