Discussion
I love the idea of trams returning to Bendigo & Geelong & Ballarat and building up the density in their CBDs so it’s realistic to live there without a car - but a 1km long tram route is taking the piss. 10km, yes, not 1km. I can walk 1km in 15 min, what’s the fucken point
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-09-12/bendigo-geelong-urged-to-join-light-rail-revolution/107139112
@decryption it's a foot in the door. A Trojan horse by the public transport advocates that they can widen over time. Will it be more expensive? Yes. Will it be more tolerable? Probably.
@bok better than nothing, but still, so painful
Rebuild on the two historic alignments.
Most of the northern half of the north south line exist a tourism attraction.
Then see what bus routes have the traffic and potential drainage to consider new tramways.
@decryption see: Newcastle. The NSW state government in their infinite wisdom decided to shorten the existing heavy rail line, and replaced it with a 2.7km light rail line.
It gets 2,800 passengers a day, and cost $200 million to remove the fully functional heavy rail line, then $250 million to build the light rail.
All so a few bits of the heavy rail line could be sold off to developers.
Complete fucking joke.
@decryption I say fuck it, let's just extend the existing Melbourne lines all the way there. Have people tap on 10 times to ride it all the way to the city
@decryption Yeah. nice for people who live in that 1km stretch, not that amazing for everyone in the suburbs - like a lot of what calls itself "urbanism" it tends to inner city gentrification more than equitable reconfiguration of car dependency
@decryption can we not dig out/refurb bendigo's heritage trams? It's like - everything is already there, isn't it?
Maybe it's cheaper to start anew, but if there's stuff already in place...
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@decryption the original source of this article is AI slop posted 2 weeks ago by the CEO of Bendigo heritage. He should be embarrassed.
- Why does the map show the tram extending _across_ the railway to the joss house. This one aspect would cost hundreds of millions of $ for a bridge over/under, and isn't even mentioned in the slop
- Why does it need _one_ lane to be reallocated? The central median (and even the poles!) is still there from the old system. Single track & no poles is free. Or double track, but that's two lanes not one.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/more-than-timetable-plan-next-hundred-years-james-reade-ai6zc/