- Title
- The lost opportunity of Melbourne's outer circle railway
- Creator
- McKenna, Trevor
- Date
- 2017
- Type
- Text; Thesis; Masters
- Identifier
- http://researchonline.federation.edu.au/vital/access/HandleResolver/1959.17/164422
- Identifier
- vital:13064
- Identifier
- https://library.federation.edu.au/record=b2740418
- Abstract
- This thesis examines a little known railway line in Melbourne, the Outer Circle Railway (OCR) running from Oakleigh in the south-east to Fairfield in the north. There is great significance to its east-north trajectory, because I will argue, it was conceptualised as a major part of the Melbourne system, for the future; a future that ostensibly lasted only two years, before the economic depression of the 1890s caused it to close in stages. It further brought in many more strands to the Melbourne transport nexus, as it circumnavigated the inner suburbs. I ask the key question ‘was the Outer Circle Railway a lost opportunity’? Though considered one of the great public transport cities of the world, Melbourne with its extensive rail and tramway networks succumbed to the winds of change, embodied by the Fordist principles of private car ownership, freeway building and traffic systems. The public transport budget was cut in the second half of the twentieth century – leaving Greater Melbourne in constant gridlock, in the twenty-first century. I use documentary analysis to examine primary and secondary documents, to comprehend whether the almost immediate denigration of the OCR, by newspapers and most historians, was warranted. Certainly I find many contemporaneous champions of the OCR, which was built to the highest British standard, as was the entire Victorian Railways system. My key finding is that the OCR rail line could be utilised in the modern era. The OCR route is pointed squarely towards Tullamarine airport, and could be used as a basis for the long-sought rail link to the airport. The decision of the Andrews Labor Government in 2014 to abandon the contentious East-West road tunnel in favour of rail projects reflects the need for a growing city to privilege public transport, as it did in the nineteenth century.; Masters by Research
- Publisher
- Federation University Australia
- Rights
- Copyright Trevor McKenna
- Rights
- Open Access
- Rights
- This metadata is freely available under a CCO license
- Subject
- Melbourne; Outer Circle Railway (OCR)
- Full Text
- Thesis Supervisor
- Beggs-Sunter, Anne
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