Epping Line to South Morang Confirmed

South Morang Extension

Timeframe Construction is expected to begin in 2010
Cost More than $650 million

Project description
Melbourne’s north, including the areas around Lower Plenty and South Morang, is booming. To serve this area, the Epping line will be extended to South Morang.
Five kilometres of track will be duplicated between Keon Park and Epping, and a second platform built at Thomastown. Thomastown and Epping stations will also receive upgrades to improve accessibility.
Three and a half kilometres of new double track will be laid beyond Epping, and a new fully staffed, premium station will be built at South Morang . Services will run from South Morang every 10 minutes in the peak and every 20 minutes at off-peak times.
The new station will include 500 car parks, a safe drop off area, taxi rank, bus facilities and bike lockers.

A new bridge is now being built at Clifton Hill, to overcome a bottleneck and build in more space for trains coming down from the north, paving the way for the extension to South Morang. Preliminary design work on the Keon Park – Epping duplication and South Morang extension is well advanced.
Project benefits
Two tracks between Keon Park and Epping and an extension to South Morang to allow more trains to run and cater for future growth in the north.
A new station at South Morang serviced by up to 380 trains each week,
services from South Morang to run every 10 minutes at peak times

More info also here.

The only bit I don't get is the last sentence. Why does the statement say it will be serviced by up to 380 train per week when the existing Epping station without the proposed works is serviced by 440 trains per week. Does this mean that at least 60 trains will terminate at Epping or will 60 services be removed?

It appears short sighted to not extend all services to South Morang. Maybe it is a sequence timetable issue? who knows. I hope they get it right and also allow for future extensions to Mernda and other growth areas north of Epping.

Currently trains depart Epping every 11 to 12 minutes during the morning peak. Of course making this every 10 minutes is good as it means at least one more morning peak train. Hopefully it will also alleviate the couple of trains that have 15 min gaps either side (like the 8:26am) that get extremely over crowded most mornings.

WTF 3

Husband accidentally shoots wife during sex

A US woman is in a critical condition after her estranged husband told police he accidentally shot her while they were having sex.

Timothy Havens, 38, told police he was reaching for something on the bedside table when the pistol went off, hitting his estranged wife Carolyn in the chest, US news channel WLWT reported.

"[The gun was] right beside the bed. I picked it up and put it off to the side. We were having sex and it went off," he can be heard saying on the emergency 911 call soon after the incident.
Carolyn Havens, 42, was in a critical condition at a hospital in Dayton, Ohio.

Timothy Havens was arrested after it emerged Carolyn Havens had a civil protection order against him, the Springfield News Sun said.

He had previously spent 60 days in jail for assaulting his wife and been ordered to attend anger management classes, WLWT said.

Epping Line to South Morang

Looks like the much needed rail extension may happen sooner rather than never:

An extension of the Epping rail line to South Morang, with construction to start in the election year of 2010 and the first trains to start operating in 2013, at a cost of about $650 million.

and:

Fast-tracking the extension of the Epping line will be welcomed by public transport advocates and residents.
The Bracks government two years ago promised to begin duplicating the track from Keon Park to Epping in 2016 and to extend the double-line to South Morang from 2021.
Mr Brumby will announce that both projects will begin in 2010, to provide services for the booming Plenty Valley.
South Morang will be a "premium station", staffed from first train to last, with about 380 services a week, a 500-space car park, a taxi rank and timetables linked to local bus services. Trains will run about every 10 minutes in peak times and 20 minutes during off-peak.
As part of the project, Thomastown station will get a second platform and will be upgraded to improve access for disabled and elderly passengers — as will Epping station.
Once the second rail bridge now being built across Merri Creek at Clifton Hill and the
South Morang extension are finished, the line will have two tracks all the
way from South Morang to the City Loop.
"This time it's actually going to happen," one Labor insider said last night of the long-promised project.

My concern is th efrequency of trains on the Epping Line. The report states that trains will run every 10 minutes in peak times. They do not do that now. It will mean that if a similar frequency of serivce occurs on the Hurstbridge line (once the bridge is complete at Clifton Hill) there will be 5 min spacing for services between Clifton Hill and the City.

I also find it odd that it is being reported that the bridge over the Merri Creek at Clifton Hill is on the Epping Line when it is not.

Cazaly Results

Well the count is in:

Cazaly Ward (3 vacancies)
Elected: KATSIS, Nick (1st elected)
Elected: MORGAN, Ben (2nd elected)
Elected: FONTANA, Vince (3rd elected)
Enrolment: 33208
Formal Votes: 22852
Informal Votes: 1580 (6.47% of the total votes)
Voter Turnout: 24432 (73.57%
of the total enrolment)
Quota: 5714

Candidate First preference votes
NOVATSIS, George 1294
PETROVIC, Steven 588
MORGAN, Ben 1852
POULTON, Trevor 584
FONTANA, Vince 2812
LEVERIDGE, Liz 1471
KATSIS, Nick 2550
EL-LEISSY, Mohammed 2732
GOGAS, George 448
McCULLOCH, Deanne 1220
SEYMOUR, Terrie 666
GOVAN, Jayne 1862
KARAM, Antoine 424
CUTRI, Joe 1370
KIRIAKIDIS, Louis 895
DONOHUE, Alison 2084

Interesting to note that the Greens candidate El-Leissy was second in first preference votes (12% of formal votes) but did not quite make it. The Labor voting blocks obviously had enough preferences.

WTF 2

Watermelons: Ralph loses inflatable breasts at sea

MORE than 130,000 inflatable breasts have been lost at sea en route to Australia.
Men's magazine Ralph was planning to include the boobs as a free gift with its January issue.
The cargo is worth about $200,000, which is another blow for publisher ACP's parent company PBL, which is already in $4.3 billion of debt.
Gallery: These breasts are plastic - but they are not lost
A spokeswoman for Ralph said the container left docks in Beijing two weeks ago but turned up empty in Sydney this week.
The magazine has put out an alert to shipping authorities to see if they have the container, but if they don't turn up in the next 48 hours it will be too late for the next issue, she said.
Ralph editor Santi Pintado urged anyone who has any information to contact the magazine.
"Unless Somali pirates have stolen them its difficult to explain where they are," Pintado said.
"If anyone finds any washed up on a beach, please let us know."

The Case Against the Mitchell Dam

For a long time, in fact too long to freely admit, I have been posting on sites such as Andrew Bolt's or TBBWP regarding the naive argument for building a dam on the Mitchell River in Gippsland. I thought it was time to post a wrap of my position including some facts and figures to counter those often made up by pundits.

The Catchment

The Mitchell River catchment is quite large covering an area of 4,870 square kilometres made up of mainly woodland and forest. The main rivers in the catchment include the Dargo and Wonangatta. Over the last few years the catchment has been subject to severe bushfires and drought conditions.

Recent Flows

The Mitchell catchment has been subject to well below average flows for an extended period of time. This is the same as the majority of catchments in Victoria. The average flow out of the total Mitchell catchment is 1,355,000ML per year.

As it can be seen even with close to average rainfall the flows from the catchment have been well below average. Looking at the data more closely:

As it can be seen there has been 4 months with above average flows in the last 24, of which, only one (June 2007) was above 125% of the average monthly flow. In the same corresponding timeframe there have been 4 months with flows below 5% of the average flow and 17 months with flows below half of the average.

The June 2007 flood was the result of 3 days of intense rainfall in the catchment. If that event is not included the flows within the system look dire.

Draining Out to Sea?

One claim about the Mitchell River is that it 'just drains out to sea'. This of course is false as the Mitchell River supplies about 30% of total inflow into the Gippsland Lakes System. We have all heard and read about the devastating effects removing the Murray River inflows from Coorong estuary systems in South Australia, so to think that it just 'flows out to sea' is naive.

Last summer the Gippsland Lakes were subject to blue-green algae blooms.

The History of Dam Proposals

There has long been proposals to construct a dam on the Mitchell River in Gippsland. The reason for this construction was not to supply water to Melbourne or to reduce downstream flooding, the main reason was to supply water for a proposed irrigation district on the flats near Sale.

In fact there was a dam constructed across the river in the 1880's but it was washed away and never replaced.

The Current Proposal

Pundits have talked about constructing a dam similar in size to the Thomson Dam.

It would have a storage of around 500 GL and a dam height of around 80m. The SKM report suggests that the annual environmental flow from the dam to supply the river downstream should be around 491 GL or about 37% of the annual flow. This does not take into account any needs of the Gippsland Lakes.

Since the Mitchell catchment supplies a large prtion of flows into the Gippsland Lakes it would be anticipated that the required environmental flows would be much larger than the 37% noted in the report. This increase would reduce the yield of the dam significantly when you consider the average yearly flows in the table above.

The estimated capital cost for the proposal in 2005 dollars $1.35billion (equates to $1.5b in 2008 dollars). In this cost there is an allowance of $480M for a 119km pipeline. This estimate is very doubtful as indicated by a 'very low' confidence level in the report and based on recent costs of $750M for the 70km long North - South Pipeline which has similar diameter pipes.

Based on a similar unit rate as the North - South pipeline the pipeworks would cost in the order of $1.3 Billion. It shold be noted that the pipeworks associated with the Mitchell proposal include a tunnel section through sensitive environments which would dramatically add to the cost.

By revising the 2005 estimate to 2008 dollars and using a current unit rate for the transfer system it would be expected that the Dam would cost in the order of $2.3 Billion. This still includes contingency on the dam construction costs.

Summary

The proposal to construct a dam on the Mitchell River in Gippsland is short sighted.

The capital costs of such a scheme would be closer to many other current alternative supply proposals than what is being reported.

The reliability of the supply is not as high as some would think with only an annual yield of 86GL/year at 95% currently and once the CSIRO climate change effects are taken into account the yield could drop to 69GL/year by 2050.

The environmental damage on the downstream river and Gippsland Lakes would be immense.

Is this a hint of a leak?

From the Herald-Sun website:

Rail project fast-tracked

THE Brumby Government has fast-tracked a major northern suburbs rail project in a move designed to appease commuter angst and unclog the embattled train network.

The Clifton Hill track duplication will be finished early next year - 12 months ahead of schedule.

The Hurstbridge line has only a single track on the existing bridge over the Merri Creek between Clifton Hill and Westgarth stations.

Once finished the additional track on the Hurstbridge line will remove the bottleneck of backed-up trains that has been occurring on the single track for years.

Commuters on the line will get faster travel times in addition to the recent increase of services.

Long-suffering strap-hangers in Melbourne's booming Whittlesea growth corridor have been pushing for a rail extension from Epping to South Morang since the Bracks Labor government promised it in 1999.

It has been put off, delayed and sidelined several times.

When Public Transport Minister Lynne Kosky unveiled the Clifton Hill project in February with a 2010 completion date she said it was a higher priority than the South Morang extension.

But the revelation of an early finish to the Clifton Hill project has sparked hopes the South Morang extension will be included in the Brumby Government's transport plan - expected early next month.

An experienced train driver, who wished to remain anonymous, yesterday told the Herald Sun work on the new bridge was well ahead of schedule and on track to be finished in January.

"It'll be up and running and commissioned at least 12 months ahead of what the Department of Transport says on its website," the driver said.

A senior Labor source told the Herald Sun the South Morang extension was odds-on to be included in the transport plan.

Ms Kosky's spokesman, Stephen Moynihan, said the minister was very pleased the work on the upgrade had progressed so well, but would not commit to a revised completion date.

The issue I have with the story is that the bridge duplication was meant to also free up train services on the Epping Line. Fingers crossed the mention of the South Morang extension may result in more frequent services on the entire Epping Line.