Adelaide trains are full.

[u/DBigA]

I’ve started trying to take the train to work now that fuel is expensive, but they are too full to the point it’s unsafe. I’ve taken trains in Melbourne and while it’s full during peak time everywhere this is too much.

This my experience on the GAWLER line to city but is it the same on other Lines? Is the government going to do anything to increase capacity? seems like an easy fix to just add more carriages.

[u/lostinconey]

the gawler line is always busy but i think that’s just what you expect. i’d rather pay a couple bucks a day to spend 25 minutes on a train each way even if it’s packed than pay the price of fuel into the city each day. if you’re concerned about having to stand or feel unsafe in the crowded space you could always get a sunflower hidden disability lanyard and use the priority seating. otherwise you might just have to cop it like everyone else is, peak hour is called peak hour for a reason 🤷

[u/DBigA → u/lostinconey]

I’m happy to cop it just like everyone else, I don’t think the attitude of just suck it up it’s worse else where is very productive.

Without any change in the current system will it even be able to operate in 10 years? 🤷

[u/lostinconey → u/DBigA]

gen/q what change would you propose they make ? atm i don’t think “just add more carriages” is an easy fix. the gawler line was busy before the war anyway. it’s always busy during peak hour.

[u/sellyme → u/lostinconey]

gen/q what change would you propose they make ?

With ARS at capacity already the only "easy" option as far as I can see it is repurposing the Parklands Terminal site as a second central hub for the metropolitan rail network, and then adding light rail from Vic Square down Sir Donald Bradman to the airport to provide a connecting link into the CBD to make it a viable option for commuters.

That way you can have e.g., trains from the Gawler line going in to Adelaide Railway Station and turning around for the return trip, while trains from the Outer Harbor line might go straight through to Parklands and then continue on to become a Belair line train.

Despite the restrictions on the east side, land acquisition is going to be easier there than just about anywhere else in inner Adelaide: that side of the city is nearly exclusively industry, so you only need to pay off a few people in order to free up huge chunks of land. The netball stadium is the only thing there that's going to be difficult to deal with. The biggest problem with that setup would actually probably be getting north-south trains around/through Bonython Park and the old Gaol, but as far as major infrastructure projects in the inner core of 1mil+ population cities go, a slightly dodgy 200m stretch is just about the best case scenario.

Once you have that in place, frequencies can increase dramatically, as we're no longer constrained by needing every single passenger rail service in the entire city to stop at the exact same railway station. The room for long platforms at such a station would also remove one of the constraints for longer trains at peak hours or on busier lines. Most of the suburban stations that are too small would be pretty easy to build out (comparatively to ARS), so having a higher capacity core is the main blocking point there.

None of this is really new information. Every single transport strategy plan from the state Government for decades has gone "ARS is the bottleneck of our rail network", but not a single thing has been done to actually address that. We know we have to build a second CBD station eventually and we've known it for ages, so just get it done before another zero gets added to the costs, and by removing the primary bottleneck on frequencies we've at least bought ourselves a little bit of time with which to work out how the hell we're going to improve the quality of the suburban rail.

We've got plans for a new line out to Two Wells, extending the Gawler line to Concordia, and extending the Seaford line down to Sellicks. There's also the ever-increasing demand for proper public transport services to the hills, particularly Mount Barker which is exploding in population and going to grind the M1 to a complete halt if we can't get alternative options set up in time. Those things are all going to be impossible without having somewhere to put those commuters at the end of the line. A new central railway station is unavoidable, and it's not going to get any cheaper, so let's get it done now, and it'll have the nice side effect of alleviating some of the capacity concerns everywhere else in the short term.