North Williamstown Station – too high

A new low-level railway station at North Williamstown formed part of the Ferguson Street level crossing removal project, but on opening in December 2021 seating at the new station was anything but stupidly high.

Passengers left dangling their feet up in the air.

Who designs this crap – the seats at the new North Williamstown station are sky high

Every seat at the new station being stupidly high above the ground.

At least their was a lot of them!

Perhaps this bloke was the architect, wanting to extract revenge on a world that forced him to pull his legs up everywhere?

Luckily Australian Standards 1428.2-1992 “Design for access and mobility, Part 2: Enhanced and additional requirements – Buildings and facilities” details how high a seat should be off the ground.

The seats at North Williamstown look quite non-compliant, and luckily the Level Crossing Removal Authority agreed.

Hi Marcus – thanks for getting in touch. We passed this feedback on to the project team who've confirmed as part of our landscaping and finishing works on the new North Williamstown Station and surrounding precinct, the height of the station seats will be lowered.

— Level Crossing Removal Project (@levelcrossings) January 11, 2022

But two months after opening, fixing the seats was still on their todo list.

Hi, thanks for getting in touch. The lowering of the station seating will commence this week.

— Level Crossing Removal Project (@levelcrossings) February 1, 2022

The seats finally being replaced with normal height ones by March 2022.

Deer Park Station – the Bunnings special

In April 2023 a new elevated station at Deer Park opened as part of the Mt Derrimut Road level crossing removal project, but it wasn’t quite quite done – Myki ticketing equipment and accessible access skipped in the rush to get the station open.

Ordering seating for waiting passengers also got missed in the process, so the Level Crossing Removal Authority had to race down to Bunnings and pick up a pile of “Black Steel Park Benches” by Marquee to place along the platforms.

As a rest area along the DDA-compliant ramp.

Marquee brand ‘Steel Park Benches’ from Bunnings installed on the ramp to platform 1

And along the rabbit warren of paths through the construction site for platform access.

They also had a half-dozen left over seats by the time they were finished.

Which would explain why I can no longer find this specific ‘Steel Park Bench’ on the Bunnings Website.

Union Station- the leafy eastern doesn’t miss out!

In May 2023 the new low-level Union Station opened in Melbourne’s east, replacing Surrey Hills and Mont Albert station as part of the removal of the Union Road and Mont Albert Road level crossings, after an intensive three month shutdown of the railway.

But that still wasn’t enough time to order some proper bench seats for the new station environs.

Bench. Stairs. Sign pic.twitter.com/qgtFZxyAaO

— Hotel 7 // Lavender (@literar63) May 21, 2023

They made a quick trip down to Bunnings, and picked up some “Marquee 1.2m Black Steel And Cast Iron Mimosa Ornate Benches” for $135 each.

I suppose they look a bit fancier than the ones Deer Park was given.

Footnote – Australian Standards

You can’t actually read Australian Standards without paying through the nose for them, despite a whole swag of legislation requiring compliance with them – so have fun trying to get access to Australian Standards 1428.2-1992 “Design for access and mobility, Part 2: Enhanced and additional requirements – Buildings and facilities”. Instead, here’s a quick summary on what it says on street furniture.

Post retrieved by 35.215.163.46 using

The post Railway station seats – are they really that difficult? appeared first on Waking up in Geelong.