Source : the age
A new fleet of hybrid trains that can run on suburban and country tracks would finally deliver a long-promised boost to rail services for people living in Melbourne’s booming west under a $1.7 billion public transport pitch to be announced by the Coalition.
Opposition Leader Jess Wilson will on Tuesday promise that bi-mode trains similar to those already in use in NSW and South Australia would bring commuters living along the Melton and Wyndham Vale lines onto a metropolitan system years before Labor’s promised electrification of those lines.
The revised western rail plan, which comes eight years after the Andrews government pledged to electrify outer-suburban lines in Melbourne’s fastest-growing population corridor, promises to deliver 25 new trains within the next term of parliament.
Bi-mode trains, which have been used for a decade in Europe, access overhead power lines while on suburban tracks and switch to a secondary diesel or battery-powered source of energy when on country tracks.
Labor’s electrification program, which was promised at both the 2018 and 2022 state elections, has been delayed until after a new station is built at Sunshine, and suburban, country and freight services are separated at the major rail junction. The $4 billion station works are not due to be completed until 2030. The Carroll government will open an upgraded Melton Station on Tuesday.
Wilson said that while a Coalition government would remain committed to electrifying the two lines, hybrid trains would deliver better services more quickly to suburbs where peak-hour commuters are being left stranded on platforms because of jam-packed trains.
“Labor has twice promised and twice failed to deliver the modern train services communities across Melton and Wyndham Vale deserve,” she said. “Our plan will deliver metro-quality train services to Melbourne’s west sooner – meaning more trains, more seats and greater capacity.”
The opposition’s public transport pitch, aimed at frustrated voters in Melbourne’s west, reflects a dramatically altered political contest leading up to the November state election, with both the Coalition and One Nation targeting some of Labor’s “dead red” seats.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics estimates that since the 2016 census, the Melton local government area has swelled from 135,000 to 231,000 people while the City of Wyndham’s population has grown from 217,000 to 348,000.
That is a combined increase of 227,000 people over 10 years.
Victorian Department of Transport data shows that between 2019 and 2024, passenger numbers at eight stations on the Melton and Wyndham Vale lines – which currently carry diesel-powered V/Line trains – surged by 26 per cent.
In 2025, The Age revealed the government had obtained a secret report warning of “crush” conditions at railway stations across Melbourne’s fast-growing northern and western suburbs – circumstances where trains are forced to leave passengers behind on a station platform – unless the rail system was overhauled.
The document supported electrifying the Melton and Wyndham Vale lines, and said commuters could be left waiting on platforms if action wasn’t taken within the next five to 10 years.
This is already a regular rush-hour occurrence at stations such as Tarneit, which was opened in 2015. It sits on the Wyndham Vale line, which is serviced by V/Line trains running from Geelong to Melbourne.
Opposition public transport spokesman Matthew Guy said the new rolling stock would enable the Melton and Wyndham Vale lines to access suburban tracks after Sunshine and run through either the City Loop or Metro Tunnel, and allow more services to be run along the lines.
Suburban trains, because of their standing room, can also take more passengers than a V/Line train of comparable length.
Guy said the “crush” capacity of a six-car VLocity train was 444 passengers, but a six-car suburban train could squeeze in 1300 people.
“Suburban passengers should be on suburban trains,” Guy said. “We don’t think that Melton and Wyndham line commuters can wait a decade for suburban trains.
“It is much faster, much cheaper and a realistic answer to the problem of getting suburban trains to the western suburbs.”
Guy said hybrid trains would also reduce the air pollution at the busy Southern Cross station, which becomes thick with diesel fumes when too many country trains are idling at the platforms.
The opposition has also promised to establish an independent Public Transport Victoria board to improve governance of rail and bus services.
In 2025, Victorian transport tsar Jeroen Weimar, who left his role as secretary last week, told the West of Melbourne Summit that the Melton line would be electrified after the $4.1 billion untangling of the track around Sunshine station and rebuild of nearby stations was completed in 2030.
Weimar said the government was exploring the use of battery-powered trains to deliver capacity improvements on the Wyndham Vale line, which would follow the Sunshine and Melton upgrades.
The Victorian and Commonwealth governments have together committed $152 million to develop its plan to electrify Melton and Wyndham Vale lines. Two sources with knowledge of the plan said the full cost had been estimated at a staggering $8 billion.
Rail Futures Institute president John Hearsch said bi-mode trains would be more expensive than VLocity models, the latest model rolled out by V/Line.
“It is technically possible and happening in other places, but … ultimately, the operating costs will be higher than a straight electric train,” he said.
“The advantages of it over the existing trains are pretty small.”
Hearsch said the bigger issue was that there wasn’t enough track space between Sunshine and the CBD to fit all the services needed to give Melton and Wyndham Vale frequencies comparable to other suburban lines.
Transport experts believe the proposed Melbourne Metro 2, another underground rail line to compliment the Metro Tunnel line, could solve this problem by creating a cross-city route that would serve as a second rail corridor connecting the western suburbs to the city.
Hearsch said the institute believed in the short term that batteries should replace the auxiliary engines on VLocity trains, which would reduce pollution at Southern Cross Station.
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Chip Le Grand leads our state politics reporting team. He previously served as the paper’s chief reporter and is a journalist of 30 years’ experience.Connect via email.
