Government delays Upfield line upgrades until 2033 with duplication promise
The government has pledged to spend $80 million on a study to find the cost of duplicating Melbourne's Upfield Line if re-elected. (Wikimedia Commons: Lachlan Tansey )
In short:
The Carroll government will delay level crossing removals and begin preliminary work on duplicating the Upfield line if re-elected.
The line through Melbourne's northern suburbs still has a section of single-line track, limiting the amount of services.
The government has pledged to spend $80 million on a study into the cost of duplicating the rail line.
The Carroll government will duplicate Melbourne's Upfield line if re-elected, but will delay scheduled works to remove level crossings for seven years.
The railway line travels through the northern suburbs and still has a section of single-line track between Gowrie and Upfield stations, limiting the amount of services that can be run on the line at any one time.
Premier Ben Carroll said the duplication would be crucial for Melbourne's north and improve reliability of rail services to the area.
"I'm from Melbourne's north-western suburbs; this has been spoken about for generations," Mr Carroll said.
Ben Carroll says residents on the Upfield Line have complained about long waits between services on the single-track line. (Flickr: Philip Mallis)
The premier estimated the duplication would cost between $650 million and $1.4 billion, but stopped short of guaranteeing funding for the project.
Instead, the government is financially committing tens of millions of dollars to a study of the potential duplication, if it's re-elected in November's state election.
"$80 million to do a detailed study on what the duplication will require, those four kilometres of track," Mr Carroll said.
"We will expect the planning and duplication study to be completed by 2028."
The premier says the Upfield Line will be duplicated by 2033 if he is re-elected this November. (ABC News)
When asked about the decision to spend $80 million on a study conducted by government departments and agencies, Minister for Public Transport Vicki Ward said it was a financially prudent investment in the future of Melbourne's north.
"The government is giving the money to the Victorian people and the people who live on this line," Ms Ward said.
As part of the announcement, the government said it would also delay the removal of eight level crossings on the Upfield line.
Mr Carroll said the delays would align the work with the duplication of the line in 2033, saving $686 million.
The delays will further stretch out the timeline of the level crossing removal project, with the Labor government promising after its 2022 election victory that 110 removals would be completed by 2030.
Last year, the government's Big Build website had promised 110 crossings would be removed by 2030, a date which has now been delayed by a further three years. (Victoria's Big Build)
The Victorian Greens have criticised the announcement, saying the government had not committed to actually building the project and was delaying much-needed works on the line.
"Labor promised these level crossings would be gone by 2027. Then it was 2030. Now it's 2033 — while communities across the north continue to grow and wait for the infrastructure they were promised," Greens MP Anasina Gray-Barberio said.
"Communities in the north deserve so much better than empty pre-election announcements that just disappear over the horizon."
The Greens are calling on the government to commit $246 million to duplicate the Upfield line.
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