The Victorian state government is set to announce
plans to expand Melbourne's struggling public transport service, including extending the Epping line to
Ongar South Morang and extending suburban bus services to run in the evenings and on Sundays. A more cynical soul than Your Humble Narrator would speculate that there's an election coming up, and that, after having served their electoral purpose, much of the plans are going to disappear to the same graveyard of abandoned public transport policies as the Doncaster railway line, the Monash University/Rowville rail link, and real crackpot pie-in-the-sky ideas such as the underground line linking St Kilda to Brunswick St. or wherever that was.
What's that? There is an election coming up? You don't say...
If, by some miracle, it does actually happen. it'll be a decent start, though no substitute for sustained investment in public transport. Bringing Melbourne's system (outside of the very centre) up to scratch would require Ken Livingstone-esque levels of spending.
The word from an insider is that this is all going to be funded stuff...