The Framework

The Victorian Government has adopted a selection framework for future level crossing removals. Under the framework, crossings are prioritised for removal based on the following key principles:

Safety

Sites with a record of incidents and a high risk of incidents.

Movement

Sites with excessive delay, congestion and unreliability, caused by high train frequencies and high traffic volumes.

Place

Sites where high train frequency significantly limits connectivity between communities and impedes access to important facilities.

Delivery efficiency

Sites where there is an opportunity to increase investment efficiency and minimise disruption through leveraging delivery of other projects across the network.

Site analysis

About 53,000 currently vehicles travel through these crossings each day. That figure is forecast to grow by about 15% to about 61,000 by 2026. The boom gates in Deer Park and Ardeer can be down for up to 45% of the 7am to 9 am morning peak, when up to 37 trains run through the crossings.

Current network plans involve increasing trains running on the Geelong and Ballarat lines, which would mean even more boom gate downtime.

As well as causing congestion and delay, these level crossings in Deer Park and Ardeer present a significant safety risk. There has been one serious collision since 2005 and 18 near misses since 2012, when train drivers have had to take emergency action.

These crossings also restrict access to important local places – making it difficult for locals to reach Deer Park and Ardeer stations, schools, a priority bicycle route and other important local facilities.

New station

As part of the removal of these level crossings, a new Deer Park Station would be built.

Ballarat and Geelong lines

These 3 level crossings are located between Sunshine Station and the Regional Rail Link junction, where both Ballarat line and Geelong line regional trains enter and exit the city.

Removing these 3 level crossings would remove the last level crossings between this rail junction and Southern Cross Station.

Design and next steps

Early investigations suggest the most likely designs for each of these 3 level crossings in the Deer Park area are for:

• Mt Derrimut Road to be removed by raising the rail line over the road
• Robinsons Road to be removed by lowering the road beneath the rail line
• Fitzgerald Road to be removed by raising the road over the rail line.

These options would be designed to allow for future possible upgrades of the Ballarat and Geelong lines and would be subject to further engineering assessments and community consultation.