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Colonial Tramcar conspiracy fear

Colonial Tramcar conspiracy fear

By Sean Car

Yarra Trams' decision to force Colonial Tramcar restaurants off the tracks due to safety concerns last month has led to growing suggestions that it could be tied up with potential plans to open a new tram route to Fishermans Bend.

The company’s fleet of heritage restaurant trams came to a sudden halt last month after failing a Yarra Trams' safety assessment due to weathered structural elements that were deemed to compromise their protection in the event of a crash.

Colonial Tramcar’s CEO Paul O’Brien accused Yarra Trams, operated under the joint venture partnership of Keolis Downer, of “moving the goalposts” by changing the standards under which it assessed the safety of heritage trams.

Mr O’Brien said that the company’s full fleet of three was now facing a potential return to the tracks as late as 2020 while it waited to gain access to new W8 trams, which are currently being built in Bendigo.

Having never previously failed a Yarra Trams safety assessment, he said the decision had already led to 40 of his 60 staff being offered redundancies and huge amounts of customer refunds.

Speculation has heightened that the decision could be associated with a state government desire to relocate the company’s now vacant Whiteman St terminal to make way for a new tram route to Fishermans Bend via a spur line off route 109.

“We’ve only speculated on that ourselves but nothing would surprise me,” Mr O’Brien told Southbank Local News. “It could well be.”

Mr O’Brien said he had hoped Minister for Public Transport Jacinta Allan would intervene to help protect both jobs and a significant contributor to the state’s tourism economy. However, her spokesperson said it was a “commercial matter” between Yarra Trams and Colonial Tramcar and played down the link with a new tram route to Fishermans Bend.

“The government is currently assessing a range of options for a future tram connection into Fishermans Bend,” the spokesperson said.

“The minister does not have the power to overrule a safety decision, however [she] has asked Public Transport Victoria (PTV) to ensure the works that need to be carried out are prioritised within our current schedule of city circle tram upgrades.”

Resident and business groups in Docklands and Fishermans Bend have long expressed their opposition to the state government’s proposed tram bridge via Collins and Lorimer streets, and opening up the 109-tram corridor has been flagged as a likely alternative.

Yarra Residents’ Action Group chairman Keith Sutherland said should the relocation of the Colonial terminal mean opening up capacity to Fishermans Bend, his group would encourage the government to do so.

“We would encourage the government to relocate them to another depot,” he said. “PTV and the government of the day should be looking at a new spur line off route 109, which would be a sensible compromise instead of the extremely expensive tram bridge.”

The group has put forward a number of different proposals to government in a bid to solve the tram bridge dispute, one of which involves rerouting tram route 12 from Spencer Street Bridge to the underutilised route 58 corridor over Queens Bridge.

Mr Sutherland said this would involve either a “relatively inexpensive tram track extension” along 400 metres of City Rd between Queensbridge and Clarendon streets or a new extension through Crown Casino’s facilities on Whiteman St. A spokesperson for Crown Resorts didn’t respond to Southbank Local News when asked to comment on this idea.

While not wishing to comment on the relocation of Colonial Tramcar’s terminal, the Fishermans Bend Business Forum (FBBF) has also expressed its support for an extension off Route 109 ahead of a tram bridge.

In its State Election Policy Paper released last month, it has called on the government to instead prioritise the delivery of Metro 2, stating that a tram route across Lorimer St would create further congestion with heavy vehicles.

“Our position is that Metro 2 should go ahead immediately, thereby eliminating the need for a tram bridge,” FBBF executive officer David Weston said. “The Plummer St tram could be a spur line from the 109 Port Melbourne tram.”

Mr Weston has also called on the government to explore Chinese transport manufacturer CRRC’s new self-driving rail buses, which he said may not require Colonial to move its terminal at all.

The new technology, which works by scanning painted road markings using sensors, was reportedly rolled out in the Chinese city of Zhuzhou last year to great success.

“I could envisage it going along Normanby Rd and Ingles St without needing tracks,” he said. “It could terminate at the junction at Clarendon St and passengers could change to the 109 tram from there.”

While discussions over public transport to Fishermans Bend continue, Mr O’Brien said the tramcar restaurants would continue to face an “unknown future” while Yarra Trams and PTV used the company as “collateral damage”.

PTV CEO Jeroen Weimar told Southbank Local News that PTV had agreed to make the next upgraded W8-class trams available to the company for fit-out when the upgrade works were completed this month.

“We’ve also reprioritised the works schedule for the W-Class tram and have made the next upgrade opportunity in December available to the restaurant tram to begin the upgrade of the existing restaurant trams,” he said.

However, Mr O’Brien told Southbank Local News that Colonial Tramcar was yet to receive any such offers in writing. He also said that Yarra Trams other offer to allow diners to eat in a stationary tramcar near its Southbank depot was “laughable”.

“There is a lot of distress from a lot of people,” he said. “Yarra Trams don’t get any financial gain out of heritage trams and they’ve looked at this issue only from their perspective.”

“We’ve had over 30 million passengers in 30 years and never had a single injury so to say they’re not safe is just ridiculous. It’s a very short-sighted view of the world and we’ve been caught in the cross fire.”

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