With final works on the $500 million Ballarat Line Upgrade locked in for January, the focus turns to what happens next to get faster trains to the regions.
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Committee for Ballarat chief executive Michael Poulton acknowledged the hard work from the state and federal governments in delivering the project, which will bring more frequent services to Ballarat, but said the next stages are critical as the city's population grows.
"The line upgrade works are crucial, and it's important for the whole system," he said.
However, he urged the state government to make a decision on the Melbourne Airport Rail Link, and whether a new tunnel will be built between Sunshine and the CBD - the Committee for Ballarat is part of the Stronger Together alliance, which includes several other regional cities advocating for a tunnel.
The tunnel would increase capacity for trains, which in turn could lead to faster services to Ballarat.
While the state government has consistently said all options remain on the table, Mr Poulton said recent population growth in regional cities makes a stronger case for committing to a new tunnel.
"The Stronger Together report talks about 500,000 people coming out of Melbourne over the course of the next 10 years - we need to start planning for that now, there is an exodus happening now, and we're seeing that anecdotally in real estate figures right now," he said.
"Back in 2008, the Sir Rod Eddington report, the East-West Report, was talking about three major projects, two of which were rail - one was metropolitan tunnelling, and the second was tunnelling that allowed for country trains, and in particular those coming from the west, including Ballarat, to get to the CBD,
"This is not new, this is work that was done some time ago ,and there's now a stronger case given it will tie in with the Melbourne Airport Rail Link.
"So the perspective of being able to pull together COVID recovery, a major infrastructure build, jobs growth, regional development and population settlement, with plans that were being talked about a generation ago now, continues to make sense in terms of getting the state government and federal government aligned on this as a great outcome for the state of Victoria.
"MARL and regional rail can start this week, it is shovel ready, and it's not Utopia, it's absolutely real and has been costed, there's been a major amount of planning work to get to this stage," he said.
The other priority, with the Ballarat Line Upgrade about to be completed, is electrifying the line to Melton, putting it on the metropolitan network, and separating V/Line trains.
The state and federal governments have allocated more than $150 million to investigate how best to do this, in the Western Rail Plan
The new timetable promises peak services to Ballarat every 20 minutes, and off-peak services every 40 minutes, when the line upgrade is complete - but Mr Poulton said more work needs to be done to bring true fast rail to Ballarat.
He said the future Melton works, and a tunnel as part of the MARL, will help stimulate investment as the city grows.
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"Better connectivity to metropolitan centres works both ways - companies will move to regional Victoria where there are better rail connections to Melbourne," he said.
"This isn't just about the ability for people in Ballarat to get to Melbourne, there's going to be an element of commuter suburb in this, but there's also going to be a huge shift in companies looking to come to regional Victoria.
"Regional rail, airport rail, and rail to the western suburbs is absolutely critical."
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