The first salvo being fired over the election and V/Line.  Coming from a party who were more interested in privatising an organisation with huge cultural and management issues.

It now appears the Libs will look at new vlocity rolling stock to replace N class locos and the N sets.

Mr Guy said the trains would be capable of speeds of up to 160 kilometres per hour and designed to suit longer-haul travel on the Warrnambool, Shepparton, Albury, Bairnsdale and Swan Hill lines.

What concerns me the most is the cost of upgrading lines for the new rolling stock in 6 car configurations which cannot meet todays demands for passenger numbers.

Also the new maintenance facilities at Seymour or Newport.

V/Line regional rail to get $633m funding boost under Coalition election promise

Personally I would not base my decision on voting s8mpl6 on this announcement when you consider it was the Libs who pulled a large amount of f7nding from Vline and caused the issues.

Would have preferred to see what other options were available for longer distance trains not velocity. The longer distance no velocity tra8ns could be included for a Mildura service.

Albury and Mildura are on standard gauge

Why not include Horsham which is a Libs Seat?

Personally I would not base my decision on voting s8mpl6 on this announcement when you consider it was the Libs who pulled a large amount of f7nding from Vline and caused the issues.

Would have preferred to see what other options were available for longer distance trains not velocity. The longer distance no velocity tra8ns could be included for a Mildura service.

Albury and Mildura are on standard gauge

Why not include Horsham which is a Libs Seat?

Personally I would not post in the forums until I had proof read my post at least once. The first read usually picks up the blindingly obvious errors like posting in Gen X speak or whatever that is.

BG

The first salvo being fired over the election and V/Line.  Coming from a party who were more interested in privatising an organisation with huge cultural and management issues.

Yet nothing about upgrading the tracks. Shiny trains on old track ain't going to cut it.

Labor is already investing billions on the track upgrades and steadily adding velocities onto the regional network. I expect they have been working on revealing the designs for the new high capacity velocity trains and put funding in this years budget.

Also one thing that everyone seems to miss. The LNP have this ideology that regional sprawl will fix Melbourne's population boom. The LNP have no idea that putting homes out in regional towns is not decentralisation, unless it means rebuilding new infrastructure in each town and adding the employment in those areas. This is unlikely to happen, instead would mean more regional folk would be heading into Melbourne making the V-line service blow up with demand.

Also one thing that everyone seems to miss. The LNP have this ideology that regional sprawl will fix Melbourne's population boom. The LNP have no idea that putting homes out in regional towns is not decentralisation, unless it means rebuilding new infrastructure in each town and adding the employment in those areas. This is unlikely to happen, instead would mean more regional folk would be heading into Melbourne making the V-line service blow up with demand.

Hi James, firstly PLEASE stop calling the Victorian Coalition the LNP, the LNP is a Queensland party created by a merger of 2 political parties. In Victoria we have a Liberal Party and a National party and every now and again these 2 form a Coalition government.

Secondly the bit about people heading into Melbourne en masse is not actually borne out by my (fairly short at around 5 years) experience up here. Many people commute to the big smoke when they first come up but then either get tired of it or earn enough money to have paid off their (cheaper) house or both and get work locally, especially in Bendigo. This then leads to more jobs in Bendigo as the new commuters buy coffees, lunches etc.

In the PTV Regional Network Plan they actually refer to the need to cater for the growing contra-peak traffic from Castlemaine to Bendio in particular which I find interesting. Would be great to see shuttle services using Sprinters to run that service as as extended Bendigo Metro.

But they'll probably use busses.

BG

Regardless of the above, this announcement is good - Labor will have to call the bid and raise it with aforementioned track upgrades.  Yes these are probably in the pipeline but the ALP will have to get the department to get them to a position where they can be announced...

Labor is already looting the budget to invest in rail lines themselves which we all
Know is good and needed. The rolling stock is just one part of the service.

This would be good news if they would actually follow through with it.

How many of Ted Baileu's 2010 public transport promises did the coalition end up delivering?

From the Australian Electoral Commission Virtual Tally Room Website (about 35 lines down):

Liberal/The Nationals                   VIC           LNP


http://results.aec.gov.au/13745/Website/GeneralPartyDetails-13745.htm

Also one thing that everyone seems to miss. The LNP have this ideology that regional sprawl will fix Melbourne's population boom. The LNP have no idea that putting homes out in regional towns is not decentralisation, unless it means rebuilding new infrastructure in each town and adding the employment in those areas. This is unlikely to happen, instead would mean more regional folk would be heading into Melbourne making the V-line service blow up with demand.

Hi James, firstly PLEASE stop calling the Victorian Coalition the LNP, the LNP is a Queensland party created by a merger of 2 political parties. In Victoria we have a Liberal Party and a National party and every now and again these 2 form a Coalition government.

Sorry that's just a mix up, I always think the Nationals and Coalition parties as one. Well in some states it is the case, others it isn't. Easy to make that kinda mistake. Politics is so messy.

Anyways I do support Rail future's report for regional rail for the future, could be great to reinstate a future link connecting Geelong, Ballarat and Bendigo. Honestly this should happen before a Mildura rail link.

Hi James, firstly PLEASE stop calling the Victorian Coalition the LNP, the LNP is a Queensland party created by a merger of 2 political parties. In Victoria we have a Liberal Party and a National party and every now and again these 2 form a Coalition government.

There's also a coalition LNP government at a Commonwealth level (presently); not sure for how much longer though!

From the Australian Electoral Commission Virtual Tally Room Website (about 35 lines down):

Liberal/The Nationals                   VIC           LNP


http://results.aec.gov.au/13745/Website/GeneralPartyDetails-13745.htm

Yes but as those LNP have nothing in the  "registered party abbreviation" column I would suggest because they are either made up by the AEC for statistical purposes or more likely have been registered by the 2 parties so no one else nicks them just in case.

In fact the coalition in Victoria has had it's ups and down, Kennett actually won enough seats to govern in his own right as a Liberal Government (ie without the Nats) but he kept them in it anyway. Then when Pete Ryan took over at the helm of the Nats he withdrew them from the coalition and they ran separately in the next couple of elections. IIRC it got pretty ugly there for a while.

BG

LNP is an accepted abbreviation for a Liberal/The Nationals coalition.

Now the LNP (Coalition) are trying to show us they have changed?