Thursday 24 November 2016
New VLine services to Swan Hill must be among 80 additional services to be announced next week Leader of The Nationals and Member for Murray Peter Walsh said.
Mr Walsh said country commuters – and not just Bendigo residents – must benefit from the 10 new services for the Bendigo line.
“We are continually treated as second-class citizens by the Andrews Labor Government and it is time they realised there is more to the state than Melbourne Geelong and Bendigo ” Mr Walsh said.
“Just last week Jacinta Allan’s failure to ensure VLine signaling services are maintained left commuters travelling to Echuca and Warrnambool stranded.
“The Labor Government seem determined to finish the year the same way they started – with VLine in chaos.”
The Swan Hill community has raised the need for improved connectivity between rural towns and centres more reliability of train services to Melbourne additional train carriages to boost capacity and improved journey time to Melbourne as key issues.
“A Melbourne service that terminates in Bendigo is of no benefit to the more than 10 000 people in the Swan Hill area ” Mr Walsh said.
“Daniel Andrews and his city-centric Labor Government need to look beyond Melbourne’s tramtracks and start delivering for rural and regional commuters.”
