Topic History of: Fix the TRAINS Max. showing the last posts - (Last post first)
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Another nice little rort
They spent over a billion dollars on this station. Still it reeks of diesel fumes and the noise is deafening inside. A really poor design job and then to cap it off, Lyn Kosky locked away the financial details of this "tender" for 50 years.
PARTS of Melbourne's Southern Cross Station are not under adequate security surveillance because its closed-circuit television cameras are so below-standard they do not cover all entrances and areas, the station's privatised operator has told the government.
In his letter, Mr Walker also describes three recent major crimes where police have found the station's security cameras inadequate: the shooting murder of a person nearby when police believed the offender came to the station, the gunman whose activity had the MCG area locked down and whom police believed was near the station, and a serious injury in June when a woman fell from the Bourke Street bridge on to platform nine.
OPPOSITION transport spokesman Terry Mulder - who could be Victoria's next transport minister in just 88 days - says he will act to have Metro trains chief executive Andrew Lezala removed if the state Coalition wins government in November.
Everyone pays for public transport, first through taxes and then through fares, and it is time everyone had access to it, just as they do to roads. Instead, Melbourne's transport planning has for decades been focused on building more roads while applying pain-killing injections to a moribund public transport network.
The government must not be allowed to get away with going to the November election without mapping out how it will overcome the lack of adequate public transport to many areas in Melbourne.
Remember Steve Bracks's famous commitment to a rapid transit connection to the airport? What did we get? A bus on a freeway.
THE $12 million TramCam plan to protect passengers has been quietly dumped after the cost blew out to $68 million. This is despite earlier state government claims that improving tram safety was a priority.
The revelations come as the department and state government were forced to justify the failure to properly estimate the cost of building new train stations. Last week it was revealed that stations initially estimated at $20 million each were revised to $55 million each four years later.
Mr Pakula has admitted in a statement to Parliament that the average expected cost of stations the government promised in 2006 at Lynbrook, Williams Landing and Cardinia Road in Pakenham had almost tripled.
Mr O'Donohue said the increase called into question the budgets for big transport projects promised by the Brumby government in recent years, including the planned $5 billion Metro rail tunnel from Footscray to Caulfield.
Since it came to power in 1999, the state government has had the costs of several rail projects escalate dramatically from original estimates. It said the cost of extending the Epping line four kilometres to South Morang would be about $8 million, later revised to $45 million.
Mr Pakula has admitted in a statement to Parliament that the average expected cost of stations the government promised in 2006 at Lynbrook, Williams Landing and Cardinia Road in Pakenham had almost tripled.
Mr O'Donohue said the increase called into question the budgets for big transport projects promised by the Brumby government in recent years, including the planned $5 billion Metro rail tunnel from Footscray to Caulfield.
"The Department of Transport is out of control; they have no capacity to cost anything meaningfully," RMIT transport planner Dr Paul Mees said.
A SINGLE piece of snapped overhead wire that brought chaos to Melbourne's train system yesterday - delaying more than 400,000 passengers for at least an hour - had been inspected for faults only 35 days earlier.
As the chaos unfolded, it became clear neither Metro nor the Department of Transport had an effective plan to deal with it.
The state government has offered free travel on suburban trains on Friday, and a free daily ticket for many V/Line commuters, to compensate for yesterday's delays.
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