>>1294876>>1294918Metro has a place, but the implementation of the North West Rail Link as it stands is complete fuckballs idiocy. The whole point of a metro is high stop density and lots of in-out traffic at each stop. It's supposed to be slower than suburban, but here they are trying to trim costs from the corners by building the minimum number of stations and attempting to keep the speed up. It also would've made more sense and been less disruptive to build another set of platforms at Epping with the line instead going via Drummoyne to cover dead space.
The same stupid shit is happening with Metro West.
Metro operating frequency is a 6 car train every 4 minutes in peak hour, but the system should be 8 car, 2 minute capable vs the existing system which uses glorified traffic lights and runs 8 cars every 3 minutes, with room for 2 minute 40 second frequency. You can (just barely) push 2 minutes on it, but not reliably. ETCS is coming which should make it possible to achieve more reliably a la RER A though (still clouds in the air).
City Circle is full.
As for the Metro West thing? Vanity project in its current form because it has the same problems as above.
Would make more sense to turn the all stopper into metro, then shift South Line services over to speed those up without losing stations to stop at and the straggler western line runs that stop at more stations.
Then the Main Suburban Main (the one Intercity likes) from Stratty can be used exclusively for Northern line.
Finally, the tunnel for what was going to be the metro can be used for express runs.
Dodgy morning MS Paint job.
In doing so, you retain travel time benefits, cost difference is minimal, and the main/suburban can still retain emergency crossovers for fallback if things go awry in a track pair.
