It was day like any other and I was on a video call with my godfather and his wife, discussing their upcoming trip to Melbourne from the UK. Both are seasoned travellers and eventually my godfather broached the inevitable: “Don’t worry about picking us up from the airport,” he said, pausing for dramatic effect. “Surely we can take the train?” I knew this conversation was coming – it’s one I’ve had many times before and it always ends the same way. With me trying to explain why one of Australia’s largest international airports still doesn’t have a rail service.
By Finn Butler, Director
January, 2025
Part of a series of articles on place, space and customer, drawing on the diverse experience of Erebus co-founders George and Finn.
It was day like any other and I was on a video call with my godfather and his wife, discussing their upcoming trip to Melbourne from the UK. Both are seasoned travellers and eventually my godfather broached the inevitable: “Don’t worry about picking us up from the airport,” he said, pausing for dramatic effect. “Surely we can take the train?” I knew this conversation was coming – it’s one I’ve had many times before and it always ends the same way. With me trying to explain why one of Australia’s largest international airports still doesn’t have a rail service.
January, 2025
Part of a series of articles on place, space and customer, drawing on the diverse experience of Erebus co-founders George and Finn.
“There’s no doubt that the MTP is a city-shaping project, despite the fact it’s coming a full 44 years after the city’s last major rail project was completed.”
Shortly after their visit I read Jake Berman’s The Lost Subways of North America and found myself wondering how Melbourne’s rail network measures up to the U.S. examples, and whether there might be some valuable insights to be gained by comparing them.
I was surprised to learn that as far back as 1926, Los Angeles was home to the largest metropolitan railway network in the world – bigger than the current footprint of the famous London Underground.
It turns out that scale isn’t a great indicator of success, because in 1961 Los Angeles’ Pacific Electric network was permanently closed. Today, only 7.7% of Las Angelans regularly use public transport – a number that continues to dwindle.
In contrast to LA’s short-lived Pacific Electric, the New York Subway persists as the universally recognised exemplar. Love it or hate it, an impressive 56% of New Yorkers are regular users of public transport.
According to Berman, successful public transport systems have four things in common: they’re fast, frequent, reliable, and they take people where they want to go. While the New York Subway system indeed meets these metrics, a key driver of success appears to lie in how the subway system was delivered, and how its construction shaped the entire city along the way.
Construction of the New York Subway commenced in 1900, with the first services up and running in 1904. By 1940, the network boasted 400 stations – that’s an average of 11 stations per year!
It’s no coincidence that during this same period, New York’s population more than doubled from a modest 3.4m to 7.9m people. Indeed, one could argue that the rapid and consistent development of its subway system sits at the very heart of New York’s success as a city in the 20th century and beyond.
Since 1950, however, the subway’s rapid development has been hampered by political wrangling and complex relationships between government, delivery agencies and consultants. Over the last 74 years, only 30 stations were completed, with the Second Avenue Subway (first mooted over 100 years ago) still only 10% complete.
By contrast, rail networks in Madrid, Berlin and Tokyo have experienced consistent and sustained growth because their strategic planning and delivery policy sits at arm’s length from the constant churn of the electoral cycle. As a result, these cities have been able to build rail systems at approximately one sixth of the cost of the New York Subway, due in large part to their ability to retain specialist skills, knowledge, processes and systems within government agencies, delivery partners and the wider pool of experts and consultants.
The introduction of five new stations in the heart of Melbourne as part of the Metro Tunnel Project (MTP) will mark an important first step in the transformation of our current ‘hub and spoke’ network to an ‘interchange network’, increasing the capacity of the system by 500,000 additional customers every week. There’s no doubt that the MTP is a city-shaping project, despite the fact it’s coming a full 44 years after the city’s last major rail project was completed.
By 2056, Melbourne’s population is predicted to more than double from 5m to 11.2m people. In order to accommodate this rate of growth, Melbourne’s public transport network will need to complete its transformation to a fully integrated and multi-modal interchange network, with projects such as the Suburban Rail Loop (SRL) and Melbourne Airport Rail Link playing a pivotal role in that transformation. It’s hard to over-emphasise the impact that the SRL will have on the lives of Melburnians – it will be the first new suburban rail line to open since the Glen Waverley Line in 1930, and will deliver reduced travel times for 80% of passengers.
Even more critical though, is the role that the SRL can play as a catalyst for change. By 2056 it is estimated that 11% of Melbourne’s jobs will be located within walking distance of an SRL station, opening up employment, healthcare and educational opportunities for regional Victorians as well as Melburnians.
Interestingly, London experienced a similar city-shaping change. In 1906, Frank Pick formed the Underground Electric Rail Company of London (UERL) through a systematic process of consolidation and expansion. At the same time, electrical engineer Harry Beck developed a revolutionary diagrammatic rail map. By condensing the suburban sections of the network, Beck was able to create a clearer sense of the network’s intersections and interchanges. An unintentional byproduct of this model was that Beck’s iconic London Undergroud map made the suburbs seem much closer to the city centre than they really were, and in doing so brought the whole region closer together, completely changing what it meant to be a Londoner. From 1906 to 1939, London’s population grew by over 30% with a vast proportion of that growth taking place in the suburbs.
It’s difficult to imagine what Melbourne might look like in 30 years, but the idea that our suburban centres will become major economic, educational, health and cultural precincts of state significance is an appealing one.
Whatever happens, one thing is clear – we need to maintain the momentum on these city-shaping rail projects, building consensus among the major stakeholders and politicians who will fund and deliver them, and also building local capacity for pencil-ready and shovel-ready projects.
While my godfather and his wife obviously won’t be catching a train from the airport anytime soon, I do look forward to the day when my goddaughter comes to stay from the UK, and when she asks to be collected at the airport, perhaps I’ll be able to tell her to jump on the train.
