2022 Victorian election: Labor promises capped V/Line fares, more services

Premier Daniel Andrews was in Ballarat for the first official day of the campaign to make the $1 billion announcement, which includes building 23 new VLocity trains and adding weekend services, flanked by deputy premier and Transport Infrastructure Minister Jacinta Allan and Public Transport Minister Ben Carroll.

Labor's plan involves capping all V/Line daily fares at $9.20 for a full fare or $4.60 for a concession fare - right now, it's up to $45.60 for a return ticket to Ballarat.

Premier Daniel Andrews said the fares changes were about providing social equity for regional Victorians.

"That's what today is about," Mr Andrews said.

"It's about paying the same to get from Ballarat to Melbourne as what people pay to get from Belgrave to the city: that parity, making sure the fares we charge are fair - that is critically important. That's exactly what we are delivering with new trains, more services and a comprehensive plan."

Minister Carroll said the cost of the fare capping was budgeted at $203 million over four years.

"This is a really important day for regional Victoria: for the first time ever putting regular Victorian passengers and commuters on parity with metropolitan Melbourne," Mr Carroll said.

"No longer will there be two different classes of passengers. This compares to Matthew Guy's policy that is all about cuts, closures and dodgy costings. No longer will we see people being offered $2 fares in metropolitan Melbourne versus only smaller discounts in regional Victoria.

"This is a billion dollar Regional Rail package that goes to the heart of rolling stock, fair equity and equitable services. As the Premier outlined, Regional Rail package fares capped at $9.20, concessions at $4.60 - that is going to make a real difference to our growing V/Line customers and passengers choosing to get on the line more and more as part of our regional rail revival program."

Deputy Premier Jacinta Allan attacked what she called the opposition's legacy of privatisation, saying it had damaged families in regional Victoria.

"Ballarat is a great proud railway town with a great railway history," Ms Allan said.

"But it wasn't always the case. Ballarat families will remember well a period of time when the Liberal Party privatised railway workshops... they privatised our V/Line networks as well. We saw during that period of time workers losing their jobs and country communities losing their train stations, cutting off their services and closing train lines; train lines from Ballarat to Ararat to Maryborough were closed under a period of time where Matthew Guy's Liberal Party were not looking after the country Victorian train network."

"Through our program of rebuilding and investing in every regional passenger line across regional Victoria, it means today we can add those extra services. You can only add extra services if you're doing the hard work: upgrading the track, investing in new signalling, opening new train stations, ordering the trains, employing the drivers to be able to run extra services. And that's where the 200 additional services as part of this package are going to add to the existing record number of 2200 services that are run across regional Victoria right now."

The Public Transport Users Association's Ben Lever says the announcement made by the government needs to have fares and infrastructure considered separately.

"Looking at the fares, The Liberals' proposal was an 80 per cent cut to Melbourne Metro fares, to $2 a day, and then a 50 per cent cut to VLine fares," Mr Lever says.

"The reaction we had was the Metro (cut) was a little bit too steep. It's great, obviously, we need cost of living relief, but we also need to make sure the system has enough revenue to keep running and to support not only maintaining the existing services, but growing the number of services. So we were a little bit concerned the Metro cut was a little bit too steep, we thought the V/Line one was a little bit more proportional.

"This one from Labor today, it's a flat fare. So how much of a percentage cut it is will vary depending on which service we're talking about. But for a Ballarat peak hour commuter, it's going to be about an 80 per cent cut, in similar proportion to the Liberal one. Definitely we think V/Line fares need to be reduced; they were too expensive or are too expensive. But again there is a little bit of a concern if you cut too deeply, you risk starving the system of revenue.

"On the service side, the announcements today were largely about improving weekend services, running more services on the infrastructure we've already got, which is really welcome, aligning the weekend timetables with the weekday ones. So going from hourly to every 40 minutes on the Ballarat line. That's a really good step. We were noticing some issues with overcrowding on a lot of weekend services, particularly if there's a footy game or something like that. The train did get quite crowded on weekends. So having the higher frequency want to get up with weekdays is a really welcome move.

"When it comes to the electrification, I suppose that goes back to what they were announcing a couple of weeks ago, talking about removing the level crossings. They have said that you need to remove level crossings before you electrify. We don't think that that's the case. The Sunbury line from Watergardens to Sunbury was only electrified 10 years ago, and they had wires over level crossings when they did that. So we don't see why that couldn't happen.

"There's two things we really want to see on the Melton line: electrifying the existing lines and having the metro train stop at the stations; and then having an extra pair of tracks for the V/Line trains to bypass that whole section."

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Myki Pass users would also be capped at the Melbourne rate, according to a media release, which is currently $5.52. The Myki system would also be extended further into the regions, although there was no promise on when the ticketing app would be made available on iPhones.

"So everyone will be moving on to essentially the Myki system from March 2023," Mr Carroll said.

"There are a couple parts of Victoria that still have paper-based tickets, but we are looking at the whole ticketing system; we want this to be very much as seamless as possible. We're working very hard with the Department of Transport; we also want to cater to people, the elderly, that are used to the old system."

Last month Matthew Guy's Coalition promised to cut public transport fares in the regions and in the city by half, making a Ballarat return ticket $22.80.

The Labor election promise also includes adding extra weekend return services to Ararat, among other regional services.

The 23 VLocity trains would be built at Alstom's facility in Dandenong, and support 100 jobs at its Ballarat maintenance facility.

Earlier, Labor announced an election promise to rebuild stations past Melton to enable nine-car train sets to run, including a rebuild of Melton station.

The Opposition promise to cap fares at just $2 a day in Melbourne and halving V/Line fares would cost $900 million more than promised, according to Victorian Department of Transport costings.

Mr Carroll says the decision to make the cuts was extensively researched.

"One thing we've heard loud and clear from regional Victoria, they have been copping a surcharge for too long," Mr Carroll said.

"They don't want that surcharge just because of where they live; they want parity with metropolitan Melbourne, and that's what we're delivering today.

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