Melbourne's Transport Privatisation Mess: The Split! 

I remember it just hitting me one day when I was staring at the seat opposite me. This was probably 15 years ago. I posted about it on railpage at the time (using the same image I used in this video) and all the grumpy old dudes told me I was just seeing things.. Daniel Bowen also blogged about it around the same time, so it was moderately well known for a while. The remarkable thing is it appears in all the X'traps ordered long after Connex vanished. I would love to know if the people producing it/Metro realised.

@@Taitset Typical for RailPage.

You split it up! You maniacs! Damn you! Damn you all to heck!!

Lol at 6:23: 'the Siemens weren't very good at stopping'

@@npmontgomeryI can imagine it going like: “See-ya-man” as soon as it runs off the platform failing to break

Fair call!

I didn’t know about this but I’m picturing it now and it’s amazing.

This is how it works in Perth. At least for the northern suburbs line. And it definitely is a good advertisement when you are going to work averaging 20km/h at 7:30am

@@hjf3022 also on the southern line down to Mandurah

Kennett privatised our pub,is transport and signed over city link to trans urban for decades. You just want to knock a Labor govt and you’re too ignorant to find an example that might interest more than 20k ppl.

I like the mets old logo, I want to get it on a tshirt one day and see how many people mistake it for an obscure band or something

Thank fuck we didn't end up as bad as the USA, land of the fee...

It was a very poor reputation, too, hence their welcome termination.

@@MervynPartin 100% accurate!

As soon as I saw the Connex logo in the thumbnail, I knew it was going to be bad.

@@WerewolfLord lol

Connex [which eventually changed its name to Veolia (which eventually changed its name to Transdev)]: Passengers will enjoy the same quality of service they’ve come to expect wherever in the world they see the Connex/Veolia/Transdev brand, whether via bus or rail! Passengers: So incompetence all around…… Spectacular……

Yeah and seats that are ridiculously thin for any journey longer than 20 minutes. Maybe better than the X'Trap but they still fall a long way short of being described as "good"

I reckon HCMTs are smoother now :)

@@lachlanbaker2031 Ugly interiors, but other than that the HCMT'S are certainly an improvement.

The Siemens are my least favourite train in Melbourne. I hate that they only have 2 doors per carriage, the slab side reflects the sunlight like a mirror, the seats are thin and uncomfortable, and they are "too" quiet inside, meaning you can hear someone talking on their phone in the next carriage. Give me the X'Trapolis trains anyday, as a passenger.

@@jdillon8360 I agree on the seats - the Comeng and X'Trapolis are comfortable to sit in. Also, the Siemens, HCMT and X'Trapolis 2.0 might have open gangways, but it's a disadvantage when someone defecates in the middle of the train and the smell disperses through the whole train.

Yes, and the stock footage of Jeff Kennett was particularly well timed. 😉

Yeah indeed, history could have very easily been very different.

While I don't think splitting trains and trams was a great idea, there were two good reasons for franchising the running of train and tram operations that both political teams have shown they agree with. The first is that the bidders thought they could run things more efficiently, meaning they bid for a much lower subsidy than the network was recieving at the time. The government could then spend that saved money on worthy things like schools, hospitals and reducing the states debt. The second reason was that it distanced politicians from anything negative about transport operations. When the system was run by bureaucrats, the politicains copped the blame for anything that went wrong. But for the past 25 years the pollies can just blame the operating company and genuinely state that they have no control of train operations.

The Japanese model of privatisation may have been better than the UK model that the State of Victoria adopted.

How does the Japanese model work?

@@Dave_Sisson very informative. Exactly the same as the UK and sadly it did not work. But still, after privatisation the state of the network has improved drastically

I was waiting for somebody to appreciate that lol

and the sadface comeng :(

I call them "headbangers" or simply "dogshit"

Poor bloke he is receiving only a taxpayer funded Premiers pension, like the rest of us he must be struggling.

I came across him one quiet Sunday morning walking through Wattle Park in the 80's when he was opposition leader. I now compare the event, in a fanciful way, with how close the Diggers were to Hitler during WW1. Ha Ha.

@@graemegalvin811 I can't tell if the historical innacuracy in your comparison is part of the joke or not, but either way it makes it funnier

Cheers! It is a good mug, can't actually remember where I got it. The handle is held on with super glue though after slight incident!

absolutely ....

100%, they have the better seats of the x'traps and the better suspension of the siemens, they're less ugly, they have (or had, I think it's being changed) more seats, their humming and rattling is far nicer than the ghastly screeching of the newer trains, they have old-style 3 tone horns, doors that can be pushed shut in terrible weather, and in general they feel like they were built to a higher quality, the x'traps especially feel very cheap and nasty. They're a relic of the Good Ole Days when everything was built in Australia and the railways were run by somewhat incompetent bureaucrats instead of greedy corporations

@@calcutt4 well said!!

Glad you found it informative! The Sandringham line is very self contained - it normally operates with the same handful of trains just running back and forth all day, while the Frankston line runs through with Werribee/Williamstown. I am currently working on another video which will elaborate on some of this stuff a bit! :)

Cheers :)

The only lines they don't run on at all, that I know of, are the Sunbury, Craigieburn, Upfield, Sandringham & Cranbourne/Pakenham lines. The rest I believe they have run on in some form.

Hello Floyd, as Xtrap maintenance is primarily based at Epping, it makes sense to schedule Xtrap trains to the CHL and BLY Groups only. There are enough Comeng and Seimens trains to cover the other lines.

Yeah they took them up there for some testing around that time, also went out to Upper Feentree Gully.

@@Taitset Okay cool, thank you. I saw some videos by Railways of Doom that had HCMTs perform late night tests on the Mernda line, so it must be that testing thing you said

I have a few lineside videos showing them: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Hz1IN1gNQZ8.html ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-CS9bl3rnjKI.html ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-4HWs2wHQwXE.html ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-kuX7l2U1k00.html

I wish WCR was still around

It's almost like essential services like public transport, or even worse, healthcare, don't work as well when privatised, because the operator will prioritise their own profits over quality of service!

Yeah, essentially it's because you don't have X'trapolis set because you're in former M>train territory, although they could certainly introduce X'traps up there now if they wanted to. As for trams, it's more to do with certain depots being allocated certain type of trams, and it's a bit hard to say what the specific reasons are for that.

@@mineyon-ms All explained in this one: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-9XbrRZrAqWA.html

the only positive from COVID are the empty trains and platforms.

@@mvfc7637 Well it would be a relief from over-packed trains of the past. Actually I would be interested in you loading observations. Personally I think transport planners everywhere are grossly over estimating numbers returning to pre-Covid levels as it seems that a good percentage of the workforce will continue to work from home at least some days. They may never return full-time. Casual observations of my local Gold Coast tram are that numbers are much the same as ever, even though foreign Uni students are somewhat down on before.

@@tressteleg1 I travelled to the CBD last week and had to catch a train back from Flinders St station during an early afternoon on a Friday, the platform was dead and this is one of Melbourne’s busiest lines. In relation to workers in the CBD etc, I estimate about 40% have returned simply by the fact that busy retail areas such as the cnr of Elizabeth and Flinders St allow you to walk at a brisk pace up the street without being slowed down by the usual plodders in front of you, furthermore, I don’t think it’ll ever return to what it was, people do not want to commute to the CBD on congested roads and public transport anymore.

@@mvfc7637 Many thanks for your observations. It seems we both agree that a percentage of city workers are gone for good. That will tend to make White Elephants of Melbourne’s’metro tunnel, Sydney’s Metro tunnel and Brisbane’s Cross River Rail tunnel, although of course all were planned and started well before Covid came along.

@@tressteleg1 the ironic thing is that Melbourne’s train network has never looked so good as it does now, the state Govt spent a whole load of money during the pandemic updating the network, for example, every station now has a digital information board with up to date information on arriving trains, trains have accurate and audible announcements and the PTV app now includes live tracking of the scheduled trains, all this is what passengers in Melbourne have spent the last 20 years imploring the State Govt and private train operators to implement and they finally delivered, yet, no one is ever going to use the trains again…oh the irony…

Yes, quite correct about the reasons for drive for efficiency

And so the govt could play one off against the other with it having a monopsony relationship with them. 'Competition for the market' rather than 'competition in the market'.

the whole model failed .... the operators walked away when the going got tough ..... how many $$$ have been remitted in profit that could have been fed into the system ... privatisation failed fullstop

@@ceebee23 if they were making profits why did they bail out?

@@MrGroganmeister I think return on investment and longer term picture was not rosy ... the amount of $$$ they would need to put into the network was not profitable for them. Operating profits are one thing ...long term capital expenditure was another.

The Doncaster line was never built, but it seemed like it would be when the Hitachis were built in the 70s, so they added it to the roll just in case. There were a few other 'what ifs,' some ended up being used - like Sunbury - others like East Doncaster didn't. A lot of drivers used to put the non-existent destinations up for fun. That photo was taken on a railfan tour - it was also the last time a 3 car Hitachi ran.

'Premium' just means they're staffed and have toilets. It's a pretty lame term!

NSW hasn't with their trains (well other than the Metro, which is privately operated by MTS - same owners and MTM). They have with the buses which are split into 14 regions, with 10 different operators at present, and also with Light Rail and Ferries.

All natural monopolies. The previous Labor govt did not get on top of the finances and it let Jeff get elected.

Alan Stockade made a lot of money out of privatisation, and made a second career out of it after he left Parliament

Hello Altos, the V/Line private operators cost more money than V/Line's own operation, another excuse to subsidise private profit with public money.

Yep it was on a railfan tour!

This tells a lot. Kennett gets a bad rap but you’ve gotta consider the extremely poor condition the state was in at the time and Victoria was saved from the depths of despair thanks to the Kennett Government.

I'm going to go into a long rant here because I feel that any apologist for the Kennett regime should be challenged as that man did so much damage to the state of Victoria despite his crusade to undo the economic damage of previous governments. Though he obviously wasn't alone in doing this and l will talk about the other instigator of this policy who had a massive influence on the Kennett government's radical changes to our public transport system in the 1990's. Firstly, Kennett might have had a initial mandate to fix Victoria's moribund economy when he was first elected as Premier, but l don't think many Victorian's had a inkling of what was in store for them and let's face it, Victoria was to be part of a radical experiment where the whole state was to be subjected to the full force of the free-market and that was also the case for Victoria's public transport system. The fact is also that Jeffrey Gibb Kennett got a bad rap because the man was a arrogant ars**ole who eventually destroyed any goodwill from the Victorian people and not only did he wreck our public transport system, he did the same privatization number on our electricity and gas providers, our hospitals and just about any of our publicly owned assets, all in the name of this extremist free market ideology that was being pushed by so called "think tanks" like the Institute of Public Affairs and the now defunct Tasman Institute. Then again Kennett was only one player in the carving up of our publicly owned assets as there were even more fanatical ideologues and l want to mention one in particular. In the 1990's the Kennett government was in the grip of the road lobby (which in reality was nothing new as you could go back to the early 1970's to find the road lobby wanting to carve up inner suburban Melbourne with massive freeways) and that included the RACV who despised our rail and tram systems. Adding to this was one of the worst offenders in this cabal of lobbyists and that was a free market fundamentalist from the IPA in the form of a bloke named Alan Moran. The reason l want to bring this person into my rant is because he more than anyone who was involved in the privatization of the Victorian public transport system, he had a ideological hatred of trains and trams and didn't shy away from making his feelings known because not surprisingly, he like many other IPA operatives, Moran had the freedom to expand on his views via opinion columns in Rupert Murdoch's daily newspaper's around Victoria who naturally constantly pushed the IPA's agenda. That's right, good old Rupert is also a devotee of corporate libertarianism, a financial supporter and a member of the IPA. That is definitely no surprise. Anyway, Moran a radical corporate libertarian, railed against ANY money being spent on public transport whatsoever and had a fanatical devotion to freeways and motor cars. Not surprisingly he is also a noted climate change denialist who believes coal is the closest thing to God in his view and also while l am at it, he believes that no matter the consequences are from smoking tobacco, the tobacco industry has every right to sell and advertise an addictive product that kills millions of people around the world every year and all in the name of "personal freedom". Even so as the years passed by and despite his success as a influencer of government, he was now without his buddy Jeff Kennett who was booted from office in 1999 and let's face it, the new Victorian Labor government wanted nothing to do with the IPA or Moran. Simply put, they were electoral poison. Despite Alan Moran rising through the ranks of the IPA and even nearly getting a climate advisor role within the Abbott Federal government, it seemed that even Moran became too extreme for the Fed's in Canberra and also the IPA in Melbourne, as they quietly pushed him out of the think tank around 2013, for what they described as their "concerns about his activities on social media". In other words he was a loose unit who made your standard IPA crazies look like reasonable and empathetic human beings. I will end my rant by finally pointing out that to understand why our public transport system is the way it is today, you only have to look at the ideology behind those two men who pushed their radical and flawed agenda to "reform" our public transport system, no matter what the cost to our state and it's people.

@@greg9246 was? You mean is an arrogant ar##hole. Anyone who actually tells his ministers to not speak to the media mid election has to be. Just look at him, still putting his 2 cents into everything to try and rally up conservative Victorians and get the Libs elected. Mostly on 3AW, no surprise. Oh, and how about coming back to Hawthorn after implementing the 6 year term for presidents, and sacking arguably one of the best coaches Australian football has seen with a year to run on a contract, all because they were terrified Sam Mitchell would go to Collingwood. That was all him, no one else. At heart he is still that mean politician, and in my opinion person he's always been. I agree though, his legacy still looms large over the Liberals and Labor always makes sure it stays that way. Rightly so in some ways. But yeah he is a big part of the reason why they've struggled at elections. What he's done to public transport in full would make this comment too long, privatisation was just one part. I didn't know about Moran but it's no surprise he's tight with Abbott, he sounds like he'd be right at home being one of those mean conservative Liberal leaders and Abbott has always been very fond of roads, mainly EWL. He was probably tight with Howard too.

Hello Scott, the VR had 9% of staff as managers, the privatised entities have around 20% as managers, a portion of whom do not know one end of a train from the other !

@@greg9246 Alan Moran seems like the kind of wanka who would do a full 180 about "personal freedom" the moment anyone mentions gay rights or other things like that