Clifton Hill Rail Project - Completion of Rail Bridge
27 January 2009
Transcript
John Brumby, Premier of Victoria
It was great to be here at Merri Creek this morning with the Minister from Public Transport Lynne Kosky and with Steve Herbert and Jenny Mikakos - to mark the completion of this first stage of the duplication of the Clifton Hill line.
[vision of construction workers completing the beam lift, November 2008]
I think you know this was a significant project which we announced, the Minister and I have been out here on a couple of occasions in the past I'm very pleased to say this morning and pleased to see this morning that trains have been running duplicating this track and basically improving the services now to something like sixty thousand passengers who use the Epping and Hurstbridge lines.
[vision of suburban train moving over bridge]
[vision of Lynne Kosky, John Brumby and group walking together, and talking looking up at the bridge]
[vision of the bridge]
I can remember as a kid, we're going back a few years I guess, I used to come in from Heidelberg into the city to go to school and I can remember many a hot summer afternoon sitting right on the top of that bridge because of capacity restraints in the system.
Its always been a single line and we've changed that, rectified that, we've taken action we've made a 52 million dollar investment to improve these services, this will make a huge difference to people on the Epping and Hurstbridge lines. It'll mean that the gridlock that used to occur here will not occur in the future.
As you know there's a bit more work to do in terms of the some of the landscaping and that will take some time to complete but I know the Minister caught the train in this morning and I've seen the trains going across and it's a great new story I think about the investments that we're making in our transport system and I think looking forward as you know we've got a 38 billion dollar Transport Plan you're going to see many projects which are completed as we go through the course of this year.
[vision of suburban train moving over bridge]
Lynne Kosky, Minister for Public Transport
This is a fantastic project and it's one of the many projects we're doing around the state to really get rid of some of the bottlenecks that exist on the system so that as we introduce extra services they can run without delays and without having to wait for other trains.
As the premier said there's around sixty thousand commuters that use both these lines. During peak period at Clifton Hill station there's a train every three minutes so it's a very, very busy station, it's a very busy line and this will really make it much better for commuters and much better in terms of punctuality as well.
[vision of suburban train moving over bridge]
We've got a number of other projects around the system so that when the eighteen new trains start to come on line at the end of the year they'll actually be able to be put into the system and run very well for the patrons.
[vision of suburban train moving over bridge]
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