Wednesday, 29 October 2025

 Wendy LOVELL (Northern Victoria) (14:04): (1918) My question is for the Minister for Public and Active Transport. Minister, will you adopt the Border Rail Action Group’s proposal for a fourth seating-only carriage to be added to all three carriage services, boosting capacity by 50 per cent, on trains between Melbourne and Wodonga – from 152 to 230 seats? The Allan Labor government’s policy to cap fares on regional lines drastically increased patronage but without first increasing capacity, leading to frequent overcrowding of trains to Wodonga. In the first six months of the year over 248,000 passengers used these trains, which were often fully booked, and 24 per cent of travellers – about 60,000 people – had to accept unreserved tickets. These are standing-room-only tickets for a train journey that takes several hours. Lack of capacity has been made worse by the fact that many services are unexpectedly reduced from six carriages to three due to train faults. On Sunday demand was so high that four additional buses were scheduled from – (Time expired)