Dear Sir/Madam

Please find below the petition raised for the Cranbourne Line for Cranbourne Line upgrades and Extension of Cranbourne East and Clyde North. We have started a petition started last week as well to voice our opinion and let Metro know that we are not just numerical data on their stats but real people whose lives depend on their train services.

This is a page for commuters on Cranbourne train line https://www.facebook.com/groups/cranbourneline/ to post their frustrations on train cancellations or journey terminations at Dandenong.If and when such disruptions occur please post your opinion as a complaint and state why/how it is affecting you that day. It could be the fact that you are running late for an interview or school exam or simply late to get home to be with your kids.

As if the wait for over the past 15 years was not good enough, commuters will have to endure a wait for many more years for any real improvement to train services to Cranbourne. Until all upgrades happening on the network currently is completed, the successive Governments would not even consider removing the bottleneck on this line and the long overdue extension of the line to Cranbourne East and Clyde.

There is a general apathy towards Cranbourne train line users which is evident by the sheer neglect of the already degraded rail infrastructure between Dandenong and Cranbourne. This is happening even whilst residents on the Frankston line are being actively engaged by the government seeking feedback on the improvements being carried out on their line.

This petition is on behalf of all Cranbourne train commuters especially those residing in the suburbs of Cranbourne, Lynbrook, Merinda Park, Cranbourne East, Cranbourne West, Cranbourne South, Clyde, Clyde North and suburbs to jointly represent to Victorian Government our grievances about the current state of affairs of the Cranbourne line. We exhort residents of all these suburbs to rise above political inclinations to stand for this common cause by signing and actively supporting this petition.

The intended recipients of this petition are politicians, who represent the population residing in the aforementioned suburbs and its neighborhoods, which includes State Minister for Public Transport Mrs.Jacinta Allan, Shadow Minister for Public Transport Mr.David Hodgett, the City of Casey's local councilors, the City of Casey Mayor, state and federal members of parliament.

A strong petition would convey a message to all our representatives that we mean business this time around, no more straddling on Cranbourne line upgrades, no more hollow promises!!!

As this is a cause with wide-ranging benefits to the communities at large, we are obliged to explain our approach and intended timeline to get a positive outcome for the residents of the aforementioned geographical areas as indicated in Figure 1:

Summary of Cranbourne line commuter woes

This petition intends to highlight the growing pains of the daily commute to the city encountered by all Cranbourne Line passengers. Years of neglect of public transport infrastructure by successive state governments has led to steady deterioration of the Cranbourne train line.

Successive state governments have failed to deliver on their long-standing promises of extending the Cranbourne Line to serve the newer suburbs of Cranbourne East and Clyde. The political apathy towards Cranbourne Line commuters and the state transport department not doing

2 - 3 Yrsago (2013 - to date) : Commenced deliberations and discussions with local politicians including Minster for Transport, State MP, Casey Councilloers, etc

June 2016 : Awareness campaign commenced on facebook group ' VIC GOVT. Please fix Cranbourne Train Line'

Sept 2016 : Online petition campaign to be run for over 3 months on facebook and public media

Dec 2016 : Consolidate email signatures and supply list to all political circles representing geographical areas impacting the real upgrades to Cranbourne train line.

ASAP : Seek firm commitment to the real upgrades that need to happen to the Cranbourne train line

anything to resolve daily commuter issues has only exacerbated hardship. A few of the burning issues of the Cranbourne Line can be summarised as –

 I. Constant signaling faults between Dandenong and Cranbourne are causing train delays and cancellations.

II. Metro is not fulfilling train services to Cranbourne especially during peak hours - trains start from Dandenong at morning peak hours instead of starting from Cranbourne and terminate at Dandenong when travelling from the City during the evening peak hours.

III. Trains regularly being cancelled, citing reasons like a faulty train, driver training, signaling fault, train running late...and the list goes on.

IV. Single track to Cranbourne has been a bottleneck for train services on this route. This a major obstacle to increasing frequency of trains to Cranbourne, an average wait of 20 mins during peak hours. Hence none of the sky rail works happening between Caulfield and Dandenong would benefit Cranbourne commuters.

V. Level crossing removals are not happening on Thomsons Road, causing massive road traffic snarls, especially during the morning and evening peak hours. Nothing has been done to alleviate the entire Thomsons Road traffic woes as yet.

VI. Poor public transport serviceability of growth suburbs of Cranbourne East and Clyde due to lack of train stations in these geographical areas. This is leading to over-crowded car parks, an insufficient number of car parks to meet current demand, commuter hardship on account of having to park cars on the nature strip and hazardous locations.

How have these daily train commute impacted Cranbourne residents?

I. Longer and unreliable train commutes have adversely affected the quality of lives of people living in Cranbourne and the surrounding suburbs. People spend more time either inside trains or waiting at station platforms instead of spending time with family and friends, doing what they would like to do!!!

II. Cranbourne line commuters have to face the embarrassment of being late to work quite frequently. This has created a negative perception of Cranbourne residents applying for jobs in the city, as employers have often questioned their ability to be available on time for work.

III. People with young families have faced increasing difficulties in being able to pick up young children from day care on time because of the unreliability of the train commute to Cranbourne.

IV. The station designs of Lynbrook, Merinda Park and Cranbourne have a lot of room for improvement especially in the aspects of accessibility to the stations from car parks, a number of car parks, passenger flow whilst exiting stations during peak hours, etc.

V. There have been flooding incidents at Merinda Park and Cranbourne station car parks during heavy rains owing to lack of gradient and drainage, especially in the old car park areas.

The above points sum up the neglect of the Cranbourne area’s public transport infrastructure for many years in a row. The unscrupulous land releases for the development of housing estates without supporting public transport

infrastructure is proof of political disinterest in the development of the region. It is now time for a major change. We residents of Cranbourne, Cranbourne East, Cranbourne West, Cranbourne North, Cranbourne South, Lynbrook, Lyndhurst, Clyde and all nearby suburbs demand respect.

Reasons why you should support and sign this petition, even if you are not a train commuter.

***As per the ABS regional population growth, Cranbourne East is the largest and fastest growing suburb in Australia (2014 -15 report).

http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/3218.0

Furthermore, according to a recent (March 2016) report published by Domain, one of the leading real estate websites of Australia, Cranbourne East is Australia’s largest growing and second fastest expanding suburb. If you wish to read the entire report, the link as follows - http://www.domain.com.au/news/australias-fastest-growing-suburbs-are-on-city-fringes-new-figures-shows-20160330-gnt6ld/

Given that there is such population growth in the Cranbourne area, the newer suburbs of Cranbourne East and Clyde require urgent investments in public transport. These suburbs need to be connected by efficient and reliable train services to offset the increase in volumes of road traffic owing to rapid population growth impacting all nearby suburbs.

***There is evidence of funds to the tune of hundreds of dollars, collected from landowners in the Cranbourne East area towards constructing a Cranbourne East railway

station. Please refer to Page 7 of the ‘Development Contributions Plan for Local Structure Plan 3 – Cranbourne East’ a development contributions report published by the City of Casey on 07/07/2015.

https://www.casey.vic.gov.au/council/policies-strategies/j-l/lsp-3-cranbourne-east-development-contributions-plan

We residents of these suburbs have the right to know how these funds plan to be utilised. All housing estates have unequivocally sold land to its residents citing a proposed railway station at Cranbourne East. To cite an example – the Mayfield estate development plan mentions the future station as shown below in Figure 2:

A reliable, efficient and inclusive train service to Cranbourne would directly translate to improved quality of

lives for residents of these suburbs. We would spend lesser time travelling and more time with family and friends.

Success criteria

Our campaign will be a long haul and we are ready for it.  We will keep you posted on significant milestones and any achievements via email and the Facebook group ‘VIC Gov. Please Fix Cranbourne Train Line’.  We seek your help and active support to our campaign for better train service for Cranbourne commuters.  Obtaining a firm and guaranteed commitment from the Victorian Government on our demands listed below, prior to the upcoming 2018 state elections would be considered a successful conclusion to our campaign – 

Ps : The criteria below is not in order of priority

I. Immediate duplication of Cranbourne line between Dandenong and Cranbourne, in order to increase train frequency.

II. Less than 10 min frequency of trains on Cranbourne line in both ways especially during peak hours.

III. Immediate extension of Cranbourne line to Cranbourne East and Clyde North – a promise long overdue and funds already collected from residents to this end.

IV. Immediate overhaul of station designs/infrastructure at Merinda Park and Cranbourne to make it more accessible, reduce parking woes and commuter chaos due to road traffic.

V. Increased bus connectivity to train services on the Cranbourne line between all impacted suburbs of Lynbrook, Lyndhurst, Cranbourne, Cranbourne East and Clyde.

We would like you to consider our request since we are daily commuters to City and having a tough time with the unplanned development in this area without proper infrastructure and enough police presence. We know that current Victorian government is investing a lot of money on public transport improvement and since this is an important need of the hour its our request to please allocate budget before next Victorian state election and start the constructions.

Please as well find some detail studies from my end with facts and figures and communication with Jude Perera MP and Minister Jacinta Allans responses as well regarding this subject.

Kind Regards

Jimmy Varghese

29 MacPherson Circuit

Cranbourne East.