City Loop

The City Loop (properly called the Melbourne Underground Rail Loop or MURL) is a railway - mostly underground, but partly surface-level and partly elevated - that encloses the central business district of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. It contains five stations, three of which are underground. The stations include the city's two largest (and the two above-ground): Flinders Street and Southern Cross (formerly Spencer Street) stations; as well as Flagstaff, Melbourne Central (formerly Museum), and Parliament stations.

Melbourne's 16 radial suburban railway lines feed into the Loop at its northwestern and southeastern corners. The underground section of the Loop follows La Trobe and Spring Streets along the northern and eastern edges of the CBD's street grid.

Photography was banned in the Loop in 2004, much to the disappointment of railway enthusiasts. The reason for the ban was due to the use of mobile telephones to take pictures of (mostly female) passengers - usually for sexual purposes.

Problems and solutions

Prior to the construction of the Loop, Flinders Street and Southern Cross (then Spencer Street) stations were connected only by a viaduct beside the Yarra River. Flinders Street, the suburban terminus, had become seriously congested by the 1970s, with a turnover of only 10 trains per platform per hour (roughly 1,700 trains a day); not enough to satisfy the city's growing needs. The problem lay in the fact that many trains had to change direction at the station to head back in the direction from which they had come, thus taking up valuable track space and time.

Several plans had been proposed over the preceding decades to alleviate the bottleneck, but none were to see the light of day, except for the concept of a circular railway allowing trains to continue past Flinders Street, turn around and return to the suburbs. The City Loop was accepted as the solution to the platform capacity dilemma, allowing up to 24 trains per platform per hour at Flinders Street in both directions (around 4,100 trains a day). The Loop would also bring train commuters directly into the CBD, dropping workers closer to their offices, students closer to RMIT University, and bringing government officials directly to the Parliament buildings, among many other things. (Although the city's tram network already covered the CBD extensively, trams are not as efficient as trains when bringing large numbers of suburbanites into the city).

Construction

The Melbourne Underground Rail Loop Authority (MURLA) was created in February 1971 to oversee the construction and operation of the Loop, and the Melbourne Underground Rail Loop Act (1970) paved the way for the project to begin. Tunneling works commenced with the turning of the first sod in June 1971.

The Loop comprises four single-track tunnels on two levels. As well as these tunnels, an extra two elevated tracks were provided between Flinders Street and Spencer Street stations, on a new viaduct beside the old. Of the three stations, Museum was built using the "cut and cover" method, while Flagstaff and Parliament were excavated using mining methods. During the excavation of Museum station, La Trobe Street and its tram tracks were temporarily relocated to the south onto the site of what is now the Melbourne Central shopping centre.

The total length of tunnels in the Loop comes to 12 km, 10 km of circular tunnels and 2 km of box tunnels. Each of the four tunnels has an average length of 3.74 km. A further kilometre of track connects those underground with those on the surface. Some 900,000 m³ of earth was removed and 300,000 m³ of concrete poured to form the stations and line the tunnel walls. 30,000 tons of steel reinforcement were used, with another 10,000 tonnes used temporarily during construction.

Opening

The system was opened gradually between 1981 and 1985. Museum station opened first, on January 25, 1981, along with the Burnley and Caulfield tunnels. The City Circle tunnel opened with special services on December 6, 1981, although Clifton Hill Group services did not start using the loop until October 31, 1982. Parliament station was opened on January 22 1983, the Northern tunnel on January 7, 1985 or January 14, 1985 (with limited services) and Flagstaff station on May 27, 1985. Queen Elizabeth II toured Museum station during her 1981 tour of Australia. Two short documentary films, Loop and Action Loop, were commissioned by the MURLA to advertise the new railway to Melburnians, as well as abroad. (These videos can be downloaded from the Department of Infrastructure). A third film was planned, but never shot.

Failure

Beneficial as the underground loop and other rail improvements have been, one thing that is often not noticed is how much management expertise has been lost to Melbourne's public transport system during its half-century of decline. The loop itself was originally planned on the basis that CBD trips by train would increase from 147,000 in 1964 (MTS, 1969) to 176,000 per day and require 181 incoming suburban trains between 8am and 9am, compared with 108 peak hour trains in 1964. Yet 2005 Connex timetables show only 87 incoming trains between 8am and 9am, less even than in 1964. There are also 8 V/Line services, 1 from the Albury line, 1 from Gippsland, and 2 each from the Ballarat, Bendigo and Geelong lines. On the Dandenong line alone, peak hour throughput has dropped from 13 trains (11 suburban, 2 country) in 1970 to 11 trains (10 suburban, 1 country) in 2005.

As a result, the system is currently running at only 48% of the capacity the 1960s rail engineers had in mind when they designed the City Loop. The main reason for the capacity myth that has been oft repeated is that operators now insist on running nearly every train through the loop, rather than running half the trains directly to Flinders Street as was originally planned.

Future expansion

The Victorian Government has intimated that the Loop could be expanded with the addition of a further two tunnels on a third level. Even though the Loop (and particular tunnels especially) is slowly approaching its own capacity, any extension would not occur for at least 20 to 30 years at current service levels. Other, even more nebulous plans have been suggested that would see a new linear underground railway running through the city centre from north to south, following the line of Swanston Street. Neither plan is being considered at present, however, as government funding for public transport improvements, including those that it advocates, is rarely forthcoming.

Services and direction of travel

File:City Loop.png

Schematic of the City Loop

All suburban trains terminate at Flinders Street, some having travelled through the Loop first, some travelling directly to Flinders Street then through the Loop, and a small number that still reverse at Flinders Street (as many trains did before the Loop was built).

There was also a special City Circle service which circled continuously around the Loop to provide cross-CBD travel; this service has now been discontinued with trams providing the alternative.

The direction of travel changes in each tunnel according to the time of day and day of week, as shown in the table below. Each suburban line belongs to one of four groups, each group running through one tunnel. The direction change occurs between approximately 12:30 and 1:00 PM, during which time no trains run through the Loop.

	Burnley group	Caulfield group	Clifton Hill group / City Circle	Northern group
Weekday mornings	All trains run through Loop first
	Anti-clockwise	Anti-clockwise	Anti-clockwise	Clockwise
Weekday afternoons	All trains run to Flinders Street then through Loop
	Clockwise	Clockwise	Clockwise	Anti-clockwise
Weekends	All trains except Caulfield group run to Flinders Street first
	Clockwise	Anti-clockwise	Clockwise	Anti-clockwise

External links and maps

• Metlink - official website of Melbourne's public transport
• Official Melbourne train network map
• Publicity leaflets circa 1970 (the source of much of this article)
• Zen and the City Loop (a more detailed explanation of the five train direction configurations)
• Department of Infrastructure 20th anniversary website