Article: Council's station plea rejected

[ozbob]

From the Melbourne Age click here!

Council's station plea rejected

Council's station plea rejected
Reid Sexton
July 26, 2011

THE state government has rejected calls from a council in Melbourne's west to reopen two abandoned railway stations, in a move the council says will worsen parking shortages and road congestion.

Hobsons Bay City Council wrote to Transport Minister Terry Mulder in May asking that he investigate rebuilding Paisley and Galvin stations on the Werribee line.

But this month the Baillieu government told the council that while it understood the demand for more railway stations on that line, it had no plans to reopen those stations.
Advertisement: Story continues below

Hobsons Bay deputy mayor Tony Briffa said soaring patronage on Melbourne's rail network had created chronic car park shortages around major western suburbs stations such as Newport and Laverton.

Department of Transport figures show that in the five years to June 2010, patronage between Newport and Werribee and Newport and Williamstown increased 54 per cent, with at least 40,000 rail trips made each weekday. While the department built 400 new car parks at Laverton in 2009, parking shortages are now so bad that one Laverton resident last month began advertising a car spot for commuters to rent after the council was forced to introduce parking restrictions.

Mr Briffa said reopening the stations, which are between Newport and Laverton and closed in 1985 with the opening of the nearby Altona Loop, would relieve parking pressures at other stations. It would help fix local road congestion by cutting the distances people drive to park at a station and encourage more people to use rail.

This, he said, would apply particularly to thousands of Altona North residents who live near Paisley but are several kilometres from an operating rail station.

A department spokesman said the stations would require ''significant work'' before they could reopen and that there were three projects under way to improve parking on the Werribee line, with a new station at Williams Landing set to create another 500 spots when it opens next year.


Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/councils-station-plea-rejected-20110725-1hx7n.html