Immediate improvement and extension of Cranbourne train line

As if the wait for the over the past 15 years was not good enough, Cranbourne residents will have to endure a wait for many years. Until all upgrades happening on the network currently is completed, the Victorian Government would not even consider removing the bottleneck on the Cranbourne line and the long overdue extension of the train line to Cranbourne East and Clyde.

There is a general apathy towards Cranbourne train line users which is evident by the sheer neglect of the already degraded rail infrastructure between Dandenong and Cranbourne. This is happening even whilst residents on the Frankston line are being actively engaged by the government seeking feedback on the improvements to be carried out on their line.

This petition is on behalf of all users of the Cranbourne train line especially those residing in the suburbs of Lynbrook, Merinda Park, Cranbourne East, Cranbourne West, Cranbourne South and Clyde to jointly represent to Victorian government our grievances about the current state of affairs of the Cranbourne line. We exhort residents of all these suburbs to rise above political inclinations to stand for this common cause by signing and actively supporting this petition.

The intended recipients of this petition are politicians who represent the population residing in the above suburbs and its neighbourhood which includes State Minister for Public Transport Mrs.Jacinta Allan, Shadow Minister for Public Transport Mr.David Hodgett, the local council members, the Casey Mayor, state and federal members of parliament.

A strong petition would convey a message to all our representatives that we mean business this time around, no more straddling on Cranbourne line upgrades, no more hollow promises!!!

As this is a cause with wide-ranging benefits to the communities at large, we are obliged to explain our approach and intended timeline to get a positive outcome for the residents of the aforementioned geographical areas as shown in Figure 1 below.
[ to be advised soon ]

Summary of Cranbourne line commuter woes;
The petition intends to highlight the growing pains of the daily commute to the city encountered by all Cranbourne Line passengers. Years of neglect of public transport infrastructure by successive state governments has led to a steady deterioration of the Cranbourne train line.

Successive state governments have failed to deliver on their long-standing promises of extending the Cranbourne Line to serve the newer suburbs of Cranbourne East and Clyde. The political apathy towards Cranbourne Line commuters and the state transport department not doing anything to resolve daily commuter issues has only exacerbated hardship. A few of the burning issues of the Cranbourne Line can be summarised as –

 Constant signalling faults between Dandenong and Cranbourne are causing train delays.

 Metro is not fulfilling train services to Cranbourne especially during peak hours - trains are either started from Dandenong at morning peak hours instead of starting from Cranbourne and trains are terminated at Dandenong when travelling from the City during the evening peak hours.

 Trains regularly being cancelled, citing reasons like a faulty train, driver training, signalling fault, train running late...and the list goes on.

 Single track to Cranbourne has been a bottleneck for train services on this route. This a major obstacle to increasing frequency of trains to Cranbourne, an average wait of 20 mins during peak hours.

 Level crossing removals are not happening on Thomsons Road, causing massive road traffic snarls, especially during the morning and evening peak hours. Nothing has been done to alleviate the entire Thomsons Road traffic woes.

 Poor serviceability of Cranbourne East and Clyde not being met due to lack of train stations in these geographical areas. This leading to over-crowded car parks, an insufficient number of car parks to meet current growth, commuters hardship on account of having to park cars on the nature strip and hazardous locations.

How have these daily train commute impacted Cranbourne residents?

 Longer and unreliable train commutes have adversely affected the quality of lives of people living in Cranbourne and the surrounding suburbs. People spend more time either inside trains or waiting at station platforms instead of spending time with family and friends, doing what they would like to do !!

 Cranbourne line commuters have to face the embarrassment of being late to work quite frequently. This has created a negative perception of Cranbourne residents applying for jobs in the city, as employers have often questioned their ability to be available on time for work.

 People with young families have faced increasing difficulties in being able to pick up young children from day care on time because of the unreliability of the train commute to Cranbourne.

 The station designs of Lynbrook, Merinda Park and Cranbourne have a lot of room for improvement especially in the aspects of accessibility to the stations from car parks, a number of car parks, passenger flow whilst exiting stations during peak hours, etc.

 There have been flooding incidents at Merinda Park and Cranbourne station car parks during heavy rains owing to lack of gradient and drainage, especially in the old car park areas.

The above points sum up the neglect of the Cranbourne area’s transport infrastructure for many years in a row. The unscrupulous land releases for the development of housing estates without supporting public transport infrastructure is proof of political disinterest in the development of the region. It is now time for a major change. We residents of Cranbourne, Cranbourne East, Cranbourne West, Cranbourne North, Cranbourne South, Lynbrook, Lyndhurst, Clyde and all nearby suburbs demand respect.

Reasons why you should support and sign this petition, even if you are not a train commuter:

 As per the ABS regional population growth, Cranbourne East is the largest and fastest growing suburb in Australia (2014 -15 report).

http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/3218.0.

Furthermore, according to a recent (March 2016) report published by Domain, one of the leading real estate websites of Australia, Cranbourne East is Australia’s largest growing and second fastest expanding suburb. If you wish to read the entire report;
http://www.domain.com.au/news/australias-fastest-growing-suburbs-are-on-city-fringes-new-figures-shows-20160330-gnt6ld/.

Given that there is such population growth in the Cranbourne area, the newer suburbs of Cranbourne East and Clyde require critical investments in public transport. These suburbs need to be connected by efficient and reliable train services to offset the increase in volumes of road traffic owing to rapid population growth impacting all nearby suburbs.

 There is evidence of funds to the tune of hundreds of dollars, collected from landowners in the Cranbourne East area towards constructing a Cranbourne East railway station. Please refer to Page 7 of the ‘Development Contributions Plan for Local Structure Plan 3 – Cranbourne East’ a development contributions report published by the City of Casey on 07/07/2015.

https://www.casey.vic.gov.au/council/policies-strategies/j-l/lsp-3-cranbourne-east-development-contributions-plan

We residents of these suburbs have the right to know how these funds plan to be utilised. All housing estates have unequivocally sold land to its residents citing a proposed railway station at Cranbourne East. To quote an example – the Mayfield estate development plan mentions the future station as shown below in Figure 2 –
[ to be advised ]

A reliable, efficient and inclusive train service to serve Cranbourne commuters would directly translate to improved quality of lives for residents of these suburbs. We would spend lesser time travelling and more time with family and friends.