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Legislative Council - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2012-10-31 Daily Xml
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ADELAIDE METROPOLITAN TRAIN SYSTEM

The Hon. M. PARNELL (16:25): I move:

That this Council—

1. Notes—

(a) the recent announcement that large parts of the Adelaide metropolitan train system will be closed for much of 2013, including the complete closure of the Belair line;

(b) that no work will be undertaken on the Belair to Mitcham section of the Belair line, allowing trains to continue to operate on this section;

(c) that a 'hybrid' replacement operation—with commuters travelling part of the way on the train before transferring to a bus—is already planned for the Outer Harbor and Grange lines;

(d) that rail closures disproportionately affect rail commuters with disabilities and also commuters with bicycles and people with prams for children; and

(e) that keeping train services on the outer section of the Belair line will ensure more wheelchair accessible buses can be focused on servicing Mitcham to the city, significantly decrease commuting times for many Mitcham Hills commuters and remove the need to provide alternative services for bike riders; and

2. Calls on the state government to keep the Belair train operating between Belair and Mitcham during the planned 2013 shutdown.

Next year, 2013, is a year that will involve major disruption to rail services. We will see the Adelaide Railway Station closed for at least one month and we will see the Noarlunga line and the Belair line closed for a much longer period, most likely at least six months and possibly much longer. A question that we could debate (but I am not proposing that we do that now) is whether or not that disruption is needed. Is it necessary; is it the right thing to do?

That would involve a debate about whether the government has made the right call in allowing the interstate freight line to continue to pass through the southern suburbs of Adelaide and through the Adelaide Hills rather than the proposal that was flagged by a number of community groups, and that is to reroute the freight line from Murray Bridge up around Truro and for it to come into Adelaide from the north. However, that debate is for another day. In fact, I think that debate now is for another generation, because with the expenditure of money on the overpassing facility at Goodwood we are now locked in this route as a major freight route for some time to come.

The Greens are disappointed that that is the outcome. We were behind the rerouting campaign to avoid unnecessary trains of up to two kilometres in length passing through the metropolitan area, especially in the southern suburbs where the alignment resulted in a great deal of noise and inconvenience, not to forget the danger that comes from the potential blocking of multiple level crossings at one time by trains of two kilometres in length, but I digress.

Given that we are having these works done at Goodwood station, there is going to be some disruption. Rail passengers are a pretty stoic bunch and that is because they have to be. Over the last few years there have been a number of disruptions where rail passengers have just had to learn to cope. Whilst passengers accept that there will be inconvenience when railway lines are closed, they do expect the government to minimise the inconvenience as much is possible.

The expectation of the community is that when a rail line is closed alternative arrangements will be put in place. Certainly the government is planning to put alternative arrangements in place, as it has during previous line closures. However, I was drawn to a letter to the editor in last week's issue of the Hills and ValleyMessenger which had within it, I think, the seeds of an excellent proposal. The letter from one R.E. Richardson of Eden Hills basically says, in relation to the closure of the Belair line and its replacement with buses:

The last closure for the line upgrade was a disaster as the bus route weaved in and out of the hills' stations and took twice as long to get to Adelaide as the train.

The numbers catching the bus dropped off dramatically over time. An alternative would be to run the train from Belair to Mitcham and a bus from Mitcham down Belair/Unley Rd to the city. This may reduce the drop-off of patronage which occurred previously. Increasing a 25 minute trip from Eden Hills to an hour plus is unlikely to recover passenger numbers.

That idea expressed in the pages of the Hills and ValleyMessenger is not an original one. In fact, a number of people have put this to me, that it is unnecessary to close an entire line when only a small section of the line is going to be subject to major works. The idea put forward in that letter is, I think, a viable solution to minimising the inconvenience when it comes to the Belair line in particular.

I should say that the purpose of this motion is not to embarrass the government or to criticise the government because I think this time they have expressed an intention to consult with consumers more than they have in the past, and I will say that minister Chloe Fox has always made herself available, and I am looking forward to discussing this with her hopefully tomorrow. So, that is the Belair line.

The Noarlunga line will be similarly affected by closure, but my understanding is that in addition to the closure that is brought about primarily by the works to be conducted at Goodwood, where the freight line will be grade separated from the passenger line, there will be electrification works along the whole length of the line. Whilst the line upgrade itself will only occur on the Oaklands Park to city section, I still think there is some scope for the government to consider timing their electrification works to enable at least the Noarlunga to Oaklands Park section to be serviced by train for as much of 2013 as possible.

I should also point out that this notion of a hybrid solution—in other words, rather than closing a rail line completely, closing just part of it and replacing part of it with buses—is already in place for the Outer Harbor and Grange lines and the changeover point for those lines is at Woodville.

Another issue, of course, in relation to the inconvenience caused by the closure of rail lines is some classes of customer who are particularly disadvantaged. At the top of that list, I think, would be people in wheelchairs. We know that there are not enough wheelchair accessible buses to ensure that every bus is available to someone who is in a wheelchair. That is what makes buses different from trains: every train is accessible to people in wheelchairs.

The Hon. R.L. Brokenshire: Especially when they are going to bring out the old silver buses from the cobwebs.

The Hon. M. PARNELL: The Hon. Robert Brokenshire interjects with some local knowledge of the types of buses he believes will be brought out to service this task. The Greens' alternative—having the trains run at least from Belair down to Mitcham—will make it easier to ensure that wheelchair accessible buses can be prioritised on that shorter section of bus route from Mitcham to the city. This is an issue that I know our colleague the Hon. Kelly Vincent has raised a number of times, and I know, through my discussions with her and her office, that they are very concerned about the impact of these closures on people with disabilities.

The Belair line has two unique geographic circumstances that make it more important perhaps than ever to at least keep part of that line operating; one of them is the topography—the fact that the line rises fairly quickly from the Adelaide Plains up into the Hills. There is another category of passengers that is affected by the topography and that is bike riders.

What you find on that line is that on any weekend day, for example, there can be up to 40 bike riders at Mitcham station trying to get their bikes onto the train for the ride up the hill. During weekdays, you do find a number of commuters and students who might ride their bike down the hill into the city but, for whatever reason, are not able to or are not comfortable with riding it all the way up.

The Hon. Rob Lucas, while he is not interjecting, is scowling. I think he cannot understand why people would not ride the whole way up to the 200 or 300-metre elevation to get up to Blackwood. This means that these people who like to combine two environmentally-friendly forms of transport will find it difficult when the train line is out because there will not be a train up the hill. That is why it makes sense to at least try to keep the train running to Mitcham so that the hilly section of that route is available to bike riders.

The other aspect of the Belair line is that the layout of the line and the location of the stations make it very difficult to provide a parallel alternative service. It is not as if it is a straight line of track with a parallel straight road running alongside it. It is a fairly easy task to replicate the train with a bus, but that is not possible on the Belair line. There is no straight road between Eden Hills and Lynton station, for example, and they are two adjoining stations on the line.

So, that means that any bus going between the two has to travel backwards away from the city first before coming around and then heading back in towards the city. What is a seven-minute journey on the train is something like a 45-minute journey by bus, and that is a massive disruption to commuters if they have to put up with that. When the Belair line was last closed for resleepering work the length of time the bus took to reach the city from many of the stations on that line was more than twice as long as the train takes.

Passengers are prepared to put up with a certain amount of inconvenience, but their patience is not unlimited and the government will freely admit that a large number of passengers simply disappear. They vote with their feet and they drive. A big part of the public transport task must be to encourage what we call discretionary passengers out of their cars and on to public transport for environmental reasons. Of course, you will always have those who have no choice—the elderly, the young, people with disabilities—who are left with whatever service the government deems fit to provide.

Back on the issue of bicycles on the train, when the Belair line last closed the government contracted Bicycle SA to provide a handy little service. It was a mini-bus that towed a trailer and it ran between Mitcham station and Blackwood. The idea was that passengers who would normally put their bike on the train with them would instead ride to Mitcham station, load their bike on the trailer and hop into the minibus. That service was by no means as frequent as the train service and it certainly did not run all the time.

It was provided during the evening peak, a number of trips, and I think there were a number of trips on the weekend as well. Whilst that is better than nothing, it would be far better if we could simply keep the existing train line running between Belair and Mitcham. You would not then need to provide the alternative, and you could still have passengers with wheelchairs and bikes at least being accommodated for that part of the route.

The idea of keeping the train services going for part of this line will provide a better service to rail consumers during this period of line closure. It is likely to result in fewer passengers abandoning the system completely and it will thereby decrease traffic congestion on those arterial roads, especially heading into town. It would also provide a great service for cyclists.

So, this motion is designed to get members thinking about the way we manage infrastructure and the way we provide alternative services to deal with the disruption that major infrastructure works cause. It is not designed to be critical of government, although of course we reserve the right to do that when the government does not get it right.

I dearly hope that the government will not do what it did last time and try to pretend that a bus can be a train and follow the same or very similar route. It just does not work on that alignment, and I hope the government listens to the community and to rail commuters and does put in place a system that minimises the inconvenience that will otherwise be caused to passengers during the 2013 shutdown. I commend the motion to the house.

Debate adjourned on motion of the Hon. Carmel Zollo.

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