Tuesday, 3 October 2023

Benambra electorate

Bill TILLEY (Benambra) (14:45): (324) My constituency question is for the new Minister for Public and Active Transport, and the information I seek is: what is the limit for unseated, standing passengers on the V/Line six-car train on the Albury-Wodonga line? I had a particularly productive relationship with the previous minister, and I really cannot understand why he is not the Premier today. But on none of those trains – not one of them – should people be standing. They travel up to about 130 kilometres an hour on some of the worst track in Victoria. The journey is close to 4 hours. It is not a suburban rattler, say, from Essendon to Flinders Street, and yet in terms of the ability for passengers to buy unreserved tickets on the ‘booking only’ weekend trains, the train is always booked out. So this is a standing or sitting-on-the-floor-of-a-carriage ticket. Helen Brockman wrote to me recently with a story of a 69-year-old friend of hers who had to stand – (Time expired)