I’m going to be doing a new series of posts about the things I think we should learn from transit and railways in various countries, organized as very specific interventions. This edition is obviously about Australia (different learnings might be more focused on particular cities), but I’m also open to suggestions for future editions — Japan and Switzerland obviously being interesting options. These posts will not be comprehensive and they might get follow-ups with more smart ideas that other places should think about adopting. This is also the good and bad, so while some of the points will be things to learn from, others will be things to avoid.
Mainline Rail Maximalism
Few places have suburban rail systems as developed and widely implemented as Australia, where every single top-tier city has an electric suburban rail system with electric multiple unit trains. This extensive use of suburban rail has made the country really good at working on railways in general, which you can see come out in the fact that Australia has a lot of modern rail infrastructure.
For example, newer systems are electrified at 25 kV AC, and European Train Control System is also being implemented in a number of cities. Interestingly, Australia also has at least 3 major rail gauges nationwide, a lot of heavy diesel freight traffic, long-distance trains that span the nation, and a lot of services that operate with modern DMUs. In fact, the country even has a number of heavy freight railways built to North American specifications in its far west that have been built for resource extraction. Suffice to say, Australia has a wide range of railways with different standards and service types, and naturally this has made the Aussies really quite great at understanding the ins-and-outs of mainline rail and all of its potential flavors.
The potential downside to this is that all of the internal differentiation seems to lead to a bit of a “mainline rail is the solution!” to every problem attitude, which (to be fair) has worked fairly well historically, but probably isn’t the best solution for creating the kind of denser cities the nation would benefit from. Australia has implemented modern tram systems in several cities, and Melbourne famously has the world’s largest legacy tram system, but there is only a single metro system, with a single line in the whole country — Sydney Metro.
City Centre Tunnels
All the impressive Australian electric suburban railways means that Australia also has a lot of city centre tunnels. Sydney has its city circle and the connection towards Bondi junction in the east; Meanwhile, Melbourne has the famous(ly confusing) city loop, which features four tracks that encircle the city centre and operate in somewhat counterintuitive ways. (Perth also has a much newer and less expansive underground city centre connection.) These city centre rail connections have provided a lot of benefits despite having their drawbacks, but a new generation of city centre tunnels being constructed today in Brisbane and Melbourne seem to bush the cost side of the cost-benefit equation a lot further.
These new tunnels are both massive projects as any major underground infrastructure for large mainline trains tends to be (especially in the English-speaking world), but their raison d’etre is not entirely clear — they are not RER A style tunnels, nor are they Japanese through-running subways. Capacity is being added of course, but there are a lot of unexplored avenues for adding capacity that Australian cities could have taken first for much lower costs, such using metro style trains, upgrading signalling, improving corridor layouts (adding flying junctions for example), and creating more service segmentation.
I think the issue raised here is one of balance. Developing a good suburban rail network is fantastic for a city, and it also shows that suburbs can be remarkably transit oriented. However, given the billions upon billions being spent on Australian transit projects, it seems suspect that only a single metro system has been developed. I think this lack of high-capacity urban rapid transit likely hurts the nation’s ability to develop high-density, missing-middle neighbourhoods, leading to Sydney-style polycentrism and “spiky” density. In most of the rest of the country, the heavy use of legacy mainline rail for urban transport has lead to incredibly radial transit networks that lack redundancy and make non-commute trips harder than they should be on public transport.
Perth Highway Rail and Rail Bus
A lot of cities, particularly in the English-speaking world, are incredibly sprawling and have big motorway networks. Perth’s modern north-south electric rail spine (formed of the Joondalup line opened in the 1990s and the Mandurah line which opened in the 2000s) makes a fantastic example of the way fast electric suburban rail can take advantage of these corridors to provide region spanning service — and has been a massive ridership driver. This line also highlights how to create TOD on highway corridor transit, by having the rail line divert from the highway to development sites, reducing the impact of the loud and polluting roadway on development potential. Even more interesting are the bus connections (some which are cross platform with rail!) that enable high-quality service throughout the entire region to stand on the shoulders of the rail network. A fascinating detail is that much of the rail operating in highway right-of-ways operates in medians, even when they are quite winding, enabled by the narrow track gauge.
I emphasize the speed of the service, because while fast suburban trains are common, and highway median rail is also common, it’s quite uncommon to see ~130 kph train services operating in highway environments — but this has a huge potential impact on ridership (free advertising for the service) by providing competitive travel times.
Good Branding and Design is Good!
One element of transit that I do think Australian has some of the best examples of in the world is transit branding and design. While I think the “Metro Trains” branding in Melbourne is weird because the system is not a metro, it is good branding! Transperth, Transport for New South Wales, and G:link are all also strong transport brands in Australia, strong enough that I remember people fawning over their signage and vehicle liveries back on transit Facebook groups years ago.
But, the good design is not just superfluous vehicle liveries and logos (these aren’t actually superfluous, major brands and airlines redesign their logos and liveries surprisingly frequently these days). I would argue more functional elements of design like wayfinding and vehicle design are also extremely thoughtful.
For example, the “totems” used to indicate the different transit modes in Sydney - T for train, F for ferry, M for metro etc. are absolutely fantastic, while the design of the NGR trains in Brisbane is a standout for me up there with the best designs in Europe and Asia. Probably my favorite design in Australian transit is the Waratah train and it’s siblings used in New South Wales, these trains have a similar design to the also iconic and angular Tangara sets and also feature flip seats, allowing most passengers to always sit facing forward, giant doors, attractive digital wayfinding and a visual design like nothing else in the world.
All of this good design often gets dismissed by transit enthusiasts and even a lot of people in the transit industry, but excellent design is so important to making public transport feel like a part of the culture. This is something which happens a lot more naturally when the trains and stations are bright and modern, or at least quirky and not sterile institutional spaces.
Bus Service is not OK, special service is better
Give the suburban nature of so much of Australia’s major cities, you might expect buses move an enormous number of people, but this isn’t so, particularly in Melbourne. In conversations about the county’s transit, I find buses are often dismissed, and this perhaps isn’t surprising when service levels of hourly or half-hourly are quite common. It seems that one of the few strong elements of the North American transit revival “buses should run at least every 15-minutes all day because people hate waiting” has not made it down under (although some have been advocating hard for more frequent service). What’s surprising is how many tram routes also provide lacklustre frequencies — especially given how much attention Melbourne’s trams get.
Sydney on the other hand does fair better, but large parts of the newly developing suburban Western Sydney region are transit deserts; it’s either live close enough to a train station to walk, or you’ll drive.
Where things get a little better is “special” service which is what I am calling night service and event service. While Melbourne has lacklustre daytime frequencies, its trams and trains quite notably run all night on weekends — and the modern G:Link line in Gold Coast does as well. This is great and quite uncommon in the English-speaking world, and the only thing I wish we saw more of was service in between the evening peak and the overnight period: in Toronto such service is usually still every few minutes on major routes, but in Melbourne it drops off in a big way.
What is much more impressive is the special event service you often see in Australian cities for major sporting events and concerts. Such venues often have oversized stations to handle more trains, and direct train services to other parts of the network are also often common. I remember leaving a concert at what was at the time called ANZ stadium at Sydney Olympic park years and years ago late at night and descending into the huge and impressive Olympic Park station and being whisked away on a train running express direct to Central.
Is there something you think the world should learn from Australian transit? Leave a comment!
Reckon we could do far better in terms of intercity transit. From memory, there’s like two trains a day that go from Sydney-Melbourne and they take an insane amount of time to get there. Meanwhilst we have two major airlines that operate 180 seat aircraft every 1hr out of peak and every 15 minutes in peak periods between Sydney and Melbourne (1hr flight time) meaning there is at least 8 flights an hour during peak times and that’s not even considering the low cost carriers. Even with airport security and the travel time to get to the airport, flying is easily the best option and it’s not particularly close. That’s also not even factoring in other popular 1hr hops like Brisbane-Sydney. I couldn’t even tell you if there is a train service, but I can tell you that both major airlines operate 180 seat aircraft every 1hr off peak and every 30 min during peak periods, Now this works well for me, I’ve got my commercial licence and will be striving towards working for one of those airlines, but even I understand the lack of competitive train options on these really short trips means it’s just ingrained into Aussies that if you wanna travel over state borders to another major city, you’ll probably be flying.
A lot of other intercity trains are more or less tourisn adventures (The Ghan etc) and definitely not for a daily commute. I think within states, intercity transit is ok but it’s definitely not fast. Queensland has the Tilt Train, NSW has a number of regional services being run, and Victoria has V-Line.
The discussion over high speed rail between Sydney and Melbourne has been talked about a lot and the appetite for doing it has been no match for the geographical challenges associated with making it happen. I dunno how it compares to geography in Japan, but I wouldn’t ever accuse Japan of being a flat country (they seem to make high speed trains work). Even smaller projects to cut travel time might be beneficial, but I think the only way to make these trains competitive with flying is by using high speed rail.
In summary, another thing I think America might do better than Australia is intercity trains (especially in the North-east corridor) with Amtrak being a National Railway Operator that operates services throughout the country. Australia has more of a state-by-state approach (as evidenced by the different track gauges) but that doesn’t lend itself well to intercity services which cross state borders.
If you want to see buses getting it done, come to Brisbane, where they have well over half the PT modeshare.
This goes beyond the busway network, which is definitely something to learn from (not always for the right reasons).
In the core of the metro area, starting about two decades ago, the city council has brought in a heap of bus routes on rapid transit principles: 15 minute service both ways 6am-11pm, with wider stop spacing. And they've ~doubled corridor patronage where they've done so.