You’d think providing seating for waiting passengers at a railway station wouldn’t be difficult to arrange. But over at the Level Crossing Removal Authority they seem to have a lot of trouble achieving it, as this trio of projects goes to show.
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.
Just passed through Union Station for the first time. Those Bunnings specials look a little too high as well!
To be honest they look pretty normal to me.
The seats on the platforms at Union appear to have already had the Bunnings benches replaced with non DDA complaints ones…
I believe the Bunnings benches at Union were only at street level, not on the platforms.
Overall the design of our new stations is more suited to a Detention Centre rather than a passenger-carrying railway.
Each station does have a ‘holding cell’ on site.
https://wongm.com/2014/08/what-is-inside-pso-office-melbourne/
Thanks for that Marcus. Being a newbie on here I have just read the thread on the PSO Cubbies, cost and use thereof.
My comment was, of course, tongue-in-cheek, but my general concern is that whilst we are apparently upgrading the “network” we no longer seem to keep in mind who we are doing it for – the travelling public. It beggars belief that a new station does not provide adequate lighting, all-weather protection, seating, and (open) clean functioning toilets for passengers. Maybe even buying a ticket but perhaps that’s too much…. If all we are providing is a platform where passengers get on and off trains, then we could do that at a fraction of the present cost by reverting to continental-Europe style low platforms. We also might get projects finished without enduring several years of interrupted “services.”
On that subject maybe in the near future you could look at the project just south of South Yarra station which for several years interrupted the Sandringham Line and now the Frankston Line from Moorabbin to the city has become totally unreliable…
Well done Marcus, you are really on the ball here. I am 5f 3 in tall and the seats are not good for short people. As always in many situations I have to sit right back and have my feet dangle, which makes getting up harder, or perch on the edge.
It is not only the rail project that has poor standards for general use areas, but so many designs have only one thought in mind ‘oh that will look good’, yes, but not practical.
I still hate Union station, they didn’t have to replace Surrey Hills and Mont Albert, and even then, they should’ve just kept the name as Surrey Hills, not “Union.” Who the hell names a station “Union?”
The new station is located in Mont Albert. Station naming conventions are that Mont Albert should be the name given that is the suburb it is located in.
Nice rant Nath – the name is based on roads in the immediate area. What’s wrong with that?
Ah, the story everyone told me was that it was named “Union” because it was the merging of two stations together to create a union. I knew there were roads in the area with the same name but I never stopped to think of it like that. Thanks for letting me know.
To me it sounds like the government coming up with an explanation to suit what decision they’d already made.
I know we’re getting off-topic here, and I’m not on that line myself, but having a look at the map the new Union station is actually further from Union Road than the old Surrey Hills station was, but still pretty close to that old station, and nowhere near the old Mont Albert station.
Logic tells me that the new station should continue with the name “Surrey Hills.”
I’m not sure that there is a convention on the naming of railway stations, but I would say that generally they are named to indicate what place or area/district/suburb they are intended to serve. If we were to name stations using the name of a nearby thoroughfare but without appending “Road,” “Street” etc. as applicable, there would be an awful lot of stations just called “Station.”
Actually, there are a few that are not named after an area/district/suburb they are intended to serve. For example, Ginifer, which was originally going to be named Furlong after the nearby Furlong Road, but was changed to “Ginifer” after the death of Jack Ginifer, who was a local member of Parliament and was a minister in John Cain’s first cabinet but resigned from Parliament due to being diagnosed with terminal cancer and died two months after resigning aged 54.
Although it is further from the old Mont Albert station, the new station is located in the suburb of Mont Albert with the closest main road being Mont Albert Road. The convention has always been that stations are named after the suburb they are located in except where there are multiple stations and they are named after the road eg Hawthorn/Glenferrie. Whichever way you look at it, Union has no logic.
Somewhere or other it was written that under the naming rules, the station couldn’t be called Surrey Hills because it’s not in Surrey Hills. Even though it’s only moved a few hundred metres, the boundary between Surrey Hills and Mont Albert lies on Wilson Street and Windsor Crescent, and the old Surrey Hills station lay just to west of them, and the new one is just to the east.
The rules are here: https://www.land.vic.gov.au/place-naming/understand-the-naming-process/the-naming-rules
There’s even a Registrar of Geographic Names! Nice little job for someone…and even a department supporting him, Geographic Names Victoria.
There is actually a long list of stations named for suburbs they aren’t actually located in.
https://www.domain.com.au/news/melbourne-train-stations-that-arent-quite-where-they-say-they-are-20160920-grk54a/
However most of them would be due to suburb boundaries not being explicitly defined until the 1990s.
https://wongm.com/2022/06/melbournes-suburb-boundary-defined-1998/
Just because a station is located slightly beyond a suburb boundary does not mean that the name cannot be used.
Look at Caroline Springs Station for example. That is a fairly recent station and if that rule had been followed then the station would have been called Ravenhall.
I don’t understand why Caroline Springs was not called Ravenhall honestly…
To be honest the only things in Ravenhall is a few industrial estates, and three prisons – Caroline Springs is a more useful name.
The working name for the station was Ravenhall, with the Myki equipment still calling it ‘Ravenhall’ for a number of months after opening.
https://twitter.com/danielbowen/status/844843322866724866
I’ve noticed there’s a seat on the new extension to Platform 3 at Sunshine. Must be there so people can wait for family and friends to get off the train!
And here it is: