Article: Stopping all stations as minister backs down

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Stopping all stations as minister backs down

Stopping all stations as minister backs down
Clay Lucas
September 9, 2010

AFTER months of refusing to say if a little-used train station in Melbourne's outer west will close, public transport minister Martin Pakula has guaranteed it will remain open - even when a big, new stop opens a kilometre away in two years.

In June, The Age asked Mr Pakula if Aircraft station, in Laverton, on the Werribee line, would be closed.

About 780 people a day board at Aircraft, Metro figures from last year show.

At big stations such as Box Hill or Caulfield there are more than 10,000 boardings a day.

In June, Mr Pakula's spokesman would say only that Aircraft would remain open until 2012 - when a new station being built at Point Cook, called Williams Landing, will open.

Railway sources at the time confirmed that the government's plan was to shut Aircraft when the new station opened.

In July, opposition transport spokesman Terry Mulder guaranteed that, if his party won November's state election, Aircraft would remain open.

Now, with 79 days until the poll, Mr Pakula has made the same pledge. ''Aircraft station will not be closed,'' he said.

The Department of Transport and Metro had argued that Aircraft should be closed in 2012 because it will be so near other train stations - just a kilometre in either direction.

In July, the department's deputy director of public transport, Robert Abboud, wrote to Hobsons Bay Council that 100 new car parking spaces promised for the station by former transport minister Lynne Kosky would not be built.

Much of Aircraft station's car park was a mud pit when The Age visited last Thursday.

One railway insider reacted with surprise when told of Mr Pakula's promise to keep the station open.

Steve Bourke, who has run an IGA supermarket near the train station for eight years, said rumours of its closure had been around for five years. ''Most traders believe the closure of the station will be the end of the shopping precinct,'' Mr Bourke said last week, before Mr Pakula said it would remain open.

Most of Mr Bourke's 40 staff commuted by train, he said, and would have suffered if the station had shut. Much of his trade comes from commuters.

Many disabled people used the station, Mr Bourke said, because it was the only one in the area with ramps to platforms instead of lifts, as in more modern stations.

Disabled commuters have complained about problems with the lifts breaking down at the new $93 million Laverton station, leaving them stranded on platforms or unable to board trains.

Aircraft station opened in 1925, to service the airbase. The RAAF closed Williams Base in 1999 and sold the airfield, although an officer training school, air museum and the Air Force Band remain.