News & Discussion: Adelaide Metro Trains

[Nathan]

Electrification of the Gawler rail line from the city to Salisbury has been pushed back again to 2017-18.

[ChillyPhilly]

Electrification of the Gawler rail line from the city to Salisbury has been pushed back again to 2017-18.

Somewhat understandable, but frustrating.

It feels a lot like this, honestly.

[crawf]

Are you f*cking kidding??!!!

[metro]

Not good enough! 20 years will have passed before electric trains pass the poles that were erected out at Gawler back in 2012, like a 1 way freeway or a tin-shed airport, it's an embarrassment that we still have old diesel clunkers operating on all but 1 of our train lines. Scrap the Obahn Tunnel - put down bus lanes instead, they're cheap and quick to put in! and get rail electrification finished off to Gawler at least by 2016-17..

[Patrick_27]

Come the f**k on!!

As far as I'm concerned, that's a good as an election promise broken. Unless they're pushing back to accumulate finance to electrify the whole line and it's branch lines, they've lost my vote.

[ChillyPhilly]

How much was the figure quoted a while ago for electrification to Salisbury? $154 million? If so, look at how much the O'Bahn tunnel costs: $160 million. The plot thickens.

[[Shuz]]

With $160m you could:

Electrify the Gawler line to its end destination... Gawler!
Provide grade seperated access to the Southern Expressway at the new Darlington section.
Fund either the western half or eastern half of the CBD tram loop.
Stave off closure of half of the Modbury hospital.
Contribute the entirety to reducing the state deficit for this year to $1.04b instead of $1.2b.

Or...

Build an O-Bahn tunnel that saves 4 minutes travel time.

Hmm...priorities...priorities...priorities.

[Waewick]

With $160m you could:

Electrify the Gawler line to its end destination... Gawler!
Provide grade seperated access to the Southern Expressway at the new Darlington section.
Fund either the western half or eastern half of the CBD tram loop.
Stave off closure of half of the Modbury hospital.
Contribute the entirety to reducing the state deficit for this year to $1.04b instead of $1.2b.

Or...

Build an O-Bahn tunnel that saves 4 minutes travel time.

Hmm...priorities...priorities...priorities.

I think this is what happens when you make election promises that you don't expect to have to keep.....

just ask Brighton Rugby Club I guess.

surely some common sense will prevail

[monotonehell]

Makes you wonder what the reason is. Electrifying the train network would seem a better option.

[muzzamo]

I'm going to play devils advocate here.

Is the OBahn not the currently most patronised public transport corridor?

Would it also be fair to say that it is suffering the biggest problems, in terms of congestion, out of all the corridors?

Shiny electric trains are terrific, but I think their level of priorities are correct.

[metro]

Is the OBahn not the currently most patronised public transport corridor?

That's all good that people are using the Obahn system, shows people are willing to use fast, frequent services with few stops, but it's a disgrace that the rail lines are lagging so far behind that of a bus system, and we're so far behind the rest of the country too, it is beyond a joke! The rail network desperately needs the funding to bring it upto and beyond the popularity of the busway. Gawler line really should easilly be able to carry many more people per day than the Obahn, but it wont do that with barren train stations with a bus stop shelter, no passenger facilities, signage or information, poor access and no security or safety, and old ugly 1-2 car diesel clunkers going past every 30min with a top speed of 80km/h - of course the every 5-10min system with brand new buses, running over 100km/h with only a couple of stations is going to be more appealing.

The beauty of the Obahn busway is that buses are a very flexible mode of transport, they can run on roads and take detours. Bus lanes are very quick and cheap to lay down - and could give a much faster ride down Hackney Rd into the city centre almost overnight for significantly less cost and with significantly less disruption to traffic.

[ChillyPhilly]

I think you'll find that in the morning and evening peak the Gawler line carries more people than the O-Bahn. Electrification of the Gawler line is urgently needed, if anyone here has taken a city-bound train in the morning at about 8am, you'll agree.

[monotonehell]

I think you'll find that in the morning and evening peak the Gawler line carries more people than the O-Bahn. Electrification of the Gawler line is urgently needed, if anyone here has taken a city-bound train in the morning at about 8am, you'll agree.

I had comparison figures for this back in 2007, at the time the OBahn was more patronised than any single train line. Anyone have the up to date figures? I'm sure this would have changed by now.

[muzzamo]

I had comparison figures for this back in 2007, at the time the OBahn was more patronised than any single train line. Anyone have the up to date figures? I'm sure this would have changed by now.

If I were to guess, I would say that the gap would have widened even further.

[ml69]

I had comparison figures for this back in 2007, at the time the OBahn was more patronised than any single train line. Anyone have the up to date figures? I'm sure this would have changed by now.

If I were to guess, I would say that the gap would have widened even further.

I read somewhere that Obahn was about 25,000-30,000 passengers per day, Gawler line about 10,000 per day. Don't know how accurate that is, or which year it applies to.

What I can say is, if you had a choice of spending $160M on electrifying Gawler line or $160M on Obahn tunnel, you would get a much greater incremental increase in patronage on the Gawler line.