63,000 vehicles use these crossings each day, with the boom gates down for up to 30% of the morning peak.
Furthermore, 170 Metro and V/Line passenger trains pass through the level crossings daily carrying up to 90,000 passengers along the Cranbourne – Pakenham Line per day.
The Victorian Government is removing 17 level crossings, as part of a $15 billion investment to upgrade the Pakenham Line that will improve safety, reduce congestion and allow more trains to run more often.
Construction will begin in mid 2021, with the boom gates gone by 2023/24 and new stations finished in 2024.
Technical investigations have found that an elevated rail line is the best solution and will reduce disruption to commuters and the community.
This will also create new open space under the rail line for the community to use.
The new elevated rail line will begin just before McGregor Road and will return to ground level just past Racecourse Road.
The track will then be extended by 2km to the new Pakenham East Station, which will remove the bottleneck between regional and metropolitan train services.
Detailed engineering and design work will continue, and we’ll share further information with the community in early 2021.
The Victorian Government is removing 17 level crossings, as part of a $15 billion investment to upgrade the Pakenham Line that will improve safety, reduce congestion and allow more trains to run more often.
Together with the removal of the level crossing at Cardinia Road, which is nearing completion, this will mean no more boom gates in Pakenham.
We are building a new Pakenham Station to provide better connections between metropolitan and regional train services along with upgraded facilities and improved security.
The project will deliver 2 new electrified tracks for dedicated passing of regional trains, freight trains and trains heading to the new Metro train depot.
There will be a dedicated Metro train turn-back off the mainline to give V/Line services priority access to Pakenham Station platforms, enabling more frequent and reliable train services from Gippsland
The new Pakenham East Station will improve reliability for metropolitan and regional passengers.
It will future-proof the Cranbourne, Pakenham and Gippsland lines, allowing more services to be added in the future.
The new stations also support the other Victorian Big Build projects which will revitalise the region.
We are still in the early planning stages for the project, so the exact location for Pakenham East Station is still being determined.