Tuesday, 1 August 2023

Glen Huntly level crossing removals

Ryan BATCHELOR (Southern Metropolitan) (15:04): Glen Huntly is now officially level crossing free, after we removed the 71st and 72nd level crossings at Glen Huntly Road and Neerim Road. More than 20,000 vehicles travelled through these level crossings every day, and the boom gates were down for up to an hour during the morning peak. Right in the middle of it all was one of the last dangerous tram squares that slowed everything down. But that is now all in the past, with the reopening of Glen Huntly station yesterday and the return of express trains on the Frankston line this week. The 58-day construction blitz saw 24-hour work to demolish and rebuild the station, 64 Olympic swimming pools worth of soil removed, a 1.2-kilometre trench built under the existing road and brand new platforms at Glen Huntly station.

I want to thank the locals for their patience, the traders for their endurance and the commuters right up and down the Frankston line for doing their bit so that we could get these works done. The new Glen Huntly station precinct will revitalise the local shopping village and create better amenity for the community. And best of all, we fixed one of Melbourne’s oldest spelling mistakes, adding the space back into the name of ‘Glen Huntly station’, where it has been misspelled since 1937.