Last week marked a year since the launch of the Regional Rail Link, with new train stations at Wyndham Vale and Tarneit proving a hit with commuters.
One year on, Tarneit station is the busiest on this outer urban network, with more than 2600 passengers using it each weekday. Wyndham Vale is also among the state’s top 10, with more than 1500 daily users.
The first-year milestone coincides with a survey by Wyndham council and Public Transport Victoria, which shows both stations have been a hit with locals.
Of the 740 survey respondents, 30 per cent said they had increased their train travel since the stations opened.
The survey also found more than 62 per cent of users drove to the new train stations, while 20 per cent of passengers said they had driven their cars to work before the new stations were opened.
Werribee MP Tim Pallas said the regional rail project has connected one of Australia’s fastest growing urban communities to the metropolitan network for the first time, while Tarneit MP Telmo Languiller-Tornesi said passengers were now using rail to get to work, schools and appointments.
Wyndham council’s transport portfolio holder Glenn Goodfellow said it confirmed that investment in rail and buses pays off.
But, he said, there were still concerns in the community about the new stations, and public transport options more broadly.
“The most common suggestion as to how services could be improved was an increase in frequency of trains during peak periods, and increase in the number of seats,” he said.
“[Most] people said they did not catch the bus to their local station, the most common reasons being that it takes them too long to get to the station, the buses are not frequent enough, and the connections between buses and trains are not reliable or efficient.”
