History & Background

The Glen Waverley line today holds the record of being the line with the last work performed on a major train network back in the 1930s. Its original track was laid out to Darling with the area around East Malvern planned to be a part of the Outer Circle series of the then-Melbourne Train network.

You can see the difference between the older Darling section and the newer ‘extension’ in the way grade separation was inherent in the design of all track and stations from Holmesglen to Syndal — an interesting fact given it was the right thing to do, though more expensive.

It should be considered that originally, the train line had no direct competition as a means of transportation — it was only in the 1960s that the South Eastern Freeway was built to terminate at Toorak Rd while the Mulgrave Freeway was slowly built in the 1960/70s, beginning at the Dandenong end and slowly extended further and further west until it finally reached Warrigal Rd.

When the Monash link between Toorak Rd and Warrigal Rd was built, politics and the then Caine/Kirner government upheld the ‘no new freeways’ policy by including the three traffic light intersections of Toorak Rd, Tooronga Rd and Burke Rd!

The short-sightedness at government planning level was again evident when the Kennett government corrected the previous design flaw of grade separation for the three intersections. It was at that time when we again missed a visionary government and the opportunity to include the train lines in the grade separation work remained.

So Melbourne has continued to pay the price for the politics played by two to three successive governments. The PTUA has published a detailed history of train management (or lack of) in Melbourne, which acknowledges the effect of the new freeway in contributing to the decline of the Glen Waverley train line.

Current Situation

The Glen Waverley line currently suffers from too many level crossings. Compared to other lines, the spacing between stations is moderate, with the average time between stations being around 5 minutes. The land space and alignment of the line are related to the Gardiner Creek reserve, which is also shared with the Monash Freeway. The majority (nine) of stations are designed with the tracks separating the platforms as opposed to a single middle platform (five).

Grade Separation & Realignment

The minimalistic approach to achieving grade separation would be to rebuild all road intersections as overpass bridges over existing ground-level track. Instead, as per the design principles, the more expensive approach to tunnelling and lowering the rail track to pass under the existing road surface is chosen.

The program to rebuild the railway line as an underground metro line would commence with the key interchange stations first, followed by all other stations.

Six roads currently intersect with the Glen Waverley line, all located on the older Burnley-Darling section of the track. Each will be discussed separately, and where applicable, shall be grouped with their accompanying rebuilt station as follows:

1. Madden Grove (new Swan St metro station)
2. Glenferrie Road / Kooyong
3. Toorak Road
4. Realignment away from present Tooronga Road/Tooronga station > Tooronga Village
5. Burke Road / Gardiner
6. High Street / Glen Iris

At Madden Grove, as part of the grade separation work, the creation of a brand new metro station ‘Swan St Metro’ shall be built, allowing for convenient access to the GE corporate offices. This would ease up the current inconvenience of pedestrian traffic along Swan St between Burnley and the GE offices.

For Tooronga, significant realignment of the railway track underground shall allow for the integration of Tooronga Village into the network. Similar to IKON Glen Waverley development, my expectation here is that the new metro would have been planned as part of building Tooronga Village, and thus the changes since 2010 wouldn’t distort this alternate reality…

Extension to Knox City/Ozone

Grade separation would be part of the extension beyond Glen Waverley to Knox City/Ozone. Plans have surfaced in the local media over the years of this kind of proposal but would appear to have evaporated given the latest buzz of activity and construction that VicTrack is undertaking with IKON Glen Waverley. At least, my design supports the idea in its own way, with the following additional stations, and assumes that joint planning would have been undertaken so as to ensure a win-win outcome for both IKON and this metro extension. New stations added beyond Glen Waverley are:

1. Gallaghers  (intersection of Gallaghers Rd & High Street Rd)
2. Napier Park (High Street Rd, near the Glen Waverley Nursing Home/Salvation Army)
3. Wantirna South (Intersection of High Street Rd & Cathies Lane)
4. Knox City (Library side of the Knox City Shopping Complex)

The track alignment would largely follow High Street Rd and the course of Blind Creek from Cathies Lane to Knox City. The track between Glen Waverley Interchange and Gallaghers Metro would roughly be in a straight line under numerous properties, which would make this part of the extension the most controversial and impacting on the local community. Indeed, this has been raised in the existing discussions of any future extension and has also been the main point of opposition to any future extension.

Interchanges

My alternate plans for the Glen Waverley see a number of new interchanges:

1. Glen Waverley — intersecting with the new Springvale metro
2. Holmesglen — intersecting with the new Warrigal metro
3. Chadstone — a brand new station, intersecting with the Pakenham/Cranbourne and Warrigal metros
4. East Malvern — intersecting with the Alamein metro