Frankston line commuters have just had a 37-day taste of life on the buses and without trains.
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Now it's the turn of those in Melbourne's eastern suburbs, with several weeks of disruption looming for late spring and summer as rail lines and arterial roads are shut for the Andrews government's latest level crossing "blitz".
The Lilydale and Belgrave lines will be closed for 34 days between Box Hill and Ringwood, starting on December 27, while two level crossings are eradicated at Heatherdale and Blackburn roads.
Further along the line in Bayswater, motorists will have to find new ways to get around town when the busy Mountain Highway and Scoresby Road are closed to traffic for lengthy periods for the removal of two crossings on the Belgrave line.
Mountain Highway will be closed for just over a month, from November 20 to December 23, while Scoresby Road will be closed at the level crossing from November 2 to 19. Bayswater station will close even earlier, on October 15, to be demolished and rebuilt in a trench.
Replacement buses will run for even longer further out.
The Belgrave line will be closed between Ringwood and Belgrave for another 37 days from early November, meaning commuters on the line face 71 days in all without a rail service between now and late January.
But by the time the blitz is over, the number of level crossings between Belgrave and the city will have been cut to just four, including two on the busy rail corridor between Ringwood and the CBD.
Union Road in Surrey Hills will be one of them. It was the scene of a fatal accident earlier this month when an express train smashed into a car with two women aged in their 70s inside.
There have been calls since that smash for Labor to add Union Road to its hit list of 50 crossings to go by 2022, perhaps at the expense of another, less busy crossing.
However, Public Transport Minister Jacinta Allan said while announcing the coming blitz that the government owed it to voters not to meddle with the list it took to the election.
"Our first, foremost priority is to remove those 50 level crossings that we committed to," Ms Allan said.
"Those communities quite rightly have an expectation that those 50 are the priority crossings, and we are certainly getting on with that."
The crash at Union Road was a reminder of "how deadly and dangerous" Melbourne's level crossings are, she said.
