A thread for documenting research from Perth and Western Australia generally, with a focus on Transperth.
Designing for mass transit railways within freeway medians
Author Martinovich, P
Public Transport Authority, Western Australia
Publication Date: 2006
Conference: CORE 2006, Rail achieving growth, Conference on Railway Engineering, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 30 April-3 May 2006
Publisher: Railway Technical Society of Australasia
Advantage of Railways in Freeway Medians
- High visibility to accentuate the competitive alternate to freeway congestion.
- The major arterial connector roads are also good feeders to transit stations located where arterial feeders join the freeway.
- Land take and environmental impacts are minimised and better managed by concentrating road and rail within one corridor.
- Freeways are usually fully grade separated.
- The alignment and profile standards suit a railway
Research Paper (permalink)
http://www.railknowledgebank.com/Presto/pl/MTk4MTRjNDUtNWQ0My00OTBmLTllYWUtZWFjM2U2OTE0ZDY3LjE1NzY=
Northern Suburbs Transit System: Background and technical aspects considered in the planning and design of the rail spine [Conference Paper]
Ninth International Rail Track Conference, Perth, Australia, 1992
M. Peter Marinovich, Senior Planning Engineer, WestRail
URL: Rail Knowledge Bank [External]
In 1988, the Government of Western Australia undertook to provide a rapid transit system to serve the fast developing North Western Suburbs of Perth, which would be based around a railway spine located for a major part within the median of a busy freeway. The railway would be fed by an integrated bus system with provision for major carparks at the stations and be operational within four years. The design of the railway for 110 km/h operations presented a unique challenge in such areas as clearance to road traffic, drainage and future maintenance. New standards of alignment design were required. A track structure was needed that would provide a very high standard of reliability and stability with minimal maintenance.
A key research question was whether a median already existed. The answer is that for the most part it did, however for a 5 km section, the freeway had to be split apart because there was no median available. 
“For the first 22.5km of the route, the railway would be located entirely within the median of the Mitchell Freeway. Where that median did not exist for a 5 km section close to the City, the Freeway would be bifurcated to create the median required.”
Although they might not have the most aesthetic presentation, motorway corridors will often present an opportunity for a Priority A ROW or corridor that will support rapid transport such as BRT, LRT, commuter or metro rail in its median or on its shoulder sides.
Translink SEQ vs Transperth Train Frequency Analysis
First conducted June 2022, updated October 2023
Notes
Data was sourced from publicly available timetables on each of the transit agencies’ websites.
- For SEQ, the QR suburban network is considered all stations up to and including Airport, Beenleigh, Cleveland, Doomben, Ferny Grove, Ipswich and Kippa-Ring.
- For Transperth: From November 2023, the Armidale-Thornlie line will be closed for METRONET works.
- Perth Underground and Perth station are counted as one station.
- Transperth’s Thornline station operates 30 minutes basic frequency on Sundays.
Brisbane Airtrain vs Perth Airport Train
Here is a comparison of Brisbane Airtrain against Perth’s Airport Train (June 2024). As the chart clearly shows, Perth’s Airport train offers a superior level of service.
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Perth operates 1,019 services to and from the airport each week, while Brisbane runs just 632. This means Brisbane’s Airtrain provides only 62% of the service that Perth residents and visitors enjoy.
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Train service levels across the Perth train network are also superior to Brisbane’s. Unlike Brisbane, Perth offers 15-minute trains to almost all train stations on Saturday and Sunday.
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Perth’s train network also carries more passengers than the Queensland Rail network does. Perth achieves this in a city with a lower density, lower population and higher car use than Brisbane.
Notes
(1) Brisbane Metro to be boosted by 41 million seats if ‘compromise’ can be reached No Cookies | The Courier Mail
(2) Brisbane Airtrain: Half-price fares but no changes to timetable
https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/qld-politics/brisbane-airtrain-halfprice-fares-but-no-changes-to-timetable/news-story/8009f1363addf9a7d4c866acf46fa229
Public Transport Authority of WA (PTA)
Organisational Structure
The PTA is considered by many BTQ members to be the Gold Standard in Public Transport Governance.
- The WA PTA is different to the Queensland Translink or MTA model in that the WA authority resulted in the incorporation of former agencies into the new authority.
- By contrast, the QLD TransLink Transit Authority (TTA), when formed, did not incorporate former agencies into the new authority. Queensland Rail and Brisbane Transport (now Transport for Brisbane) continued to exist a separate agencies, with the TTA playing a co-ordination or ‘gap filler’ role between existing agencies.
Notes
Government of Western Australia
https://www.pta.wa.gov.au/about-us/our-role/organisational-structure
An Amazingly Extensive Rail Network! | Railways of Perth Explained
“With less than 2 million people, Perth is not a large city, but its rail network will soon grow to over 200 kilometres, and presents numerous lessons for retrofitting high quality public transit and serving suburban areas. Enjoy!”
Perth has done no-doubt some great RAIL stuff, there is of course, growing global skepticism over putting rail corridors down the middle of freeways…
What are they skeptical about precisely? It can’t be patronage or speed, as both are high.
- It can tend to centralise transport down congested corridors, so your putting all rail and bus options into one space…sounds cool, but can produce issues. 2) Environmental factors, noise for example, it can actually become really off-putting for would-be train users. Those platforms can be very uncomfortable places!
Is it really a problem though or a perception? Stations in Perth are enclosed which keeps the sound out.
And it doesn’t seem to be putting passengers off, the most patronised lines are the ones in the freeway medians.
I’ve ridden the Perth system fairly extensively, the stations in part have a cover, they are certainly not enclosed and even in Perth, the noise is very real and will only grow over time.
I didn’t really notice it when I used it. Again, nothing stopping enclosure of a station if it was required.
Demonstrates that Perth is light years ahead of Queensland, and they can learn a few things from them:
- independent transit authority.
- 5-min train frequencies.
- constructing train lines in freeways
- no local government interference.
- getting actual lines built quicker and cheaper than in QLD.
- embraced bus interchanges at stations.
- achieving all this with higher patronage with less population than Brisbane / SEQ network.
I previously suggested that maybe they should adopt their approach for the Sunshine Coast Line.
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Their annual report also shows that they run more train services than SEQ as well. Mindblowing.
They achieve 5 min inbound morning frequencies as well as afternoon outbound parlty because of efficient driver only operations. It would cost a fortune here to do the same under the current operating model.
The 5 min frequencies are also partly due to the convergence of lines as you get closer to the CBD.
Perth has 10 minute all day frequency on inner sections of the Fremantle line. That’s metro standard frequency.
Metro’s Mid-Freeway Transit Stations Are Hellishly Loud - Streetsblog Los Angeles
A couple weeks ago, folks from TransitCenter and Streetfilms were in Southern California to experience and document Metro’s success in expanding rail transit. In the process they also encountered some disappointing aspects of Metro rail. Metro light rail’s lack of priority when mixing with car traffic was explored in an earlier post. Today Streetfilms and TransitCenter released a new short documentary about the inhospitable environment at Metro stations located in the middle of Southern California freeways.
Metro’s Green Line is the main culprit, with eight of fourteen stations sited in the middle of the 105 Freeway. There are also three Gold Line stations on the 210 Freeway in Pasadena - and five Silver Line Bus Rapid Transit stations in the middle of the 110 Freeway.
Southern California station noise levels have been studied by Metro and by academics. Unfortunately, noise fixes have proved elusive.
In 2009, the year Metro opened the Silver Line BRT, the agency hired ATS Consulting to study noise levels at the 37th Street Station on the 110 Freeway. (The ATS study is not online, but is summarized in the UCLA study below.) ATS found station noise from 78 to 87 dB, which was “not high enough to cause hearing damage even with long term exposure, but… sufficiently high to impede most conversation and cause annoyance.” The study recommended sound barriers (more on these below) at the 37th Street Station, which Metro added.
At that time Metro station design guidelines specified a maximum 70 dB noise level. After the study, Metro increased that limit to 75 dB, but the agency has not been able to meet even that relaxed standard.
The UCLA study, Passenger Exposure to Noise at Transit Platforms in Los Angeles by Alexander Schaffer, came out in 2012. Shaffer measured noise levels at all sixteen Metro mid-freeway stations.
Metro rail freeway stations ranked in noise level order. Chart from UCLA study
Metro rail freeway stations ranked in noise level order. Chart from UCLA study
Five Green Line stations top the list for worst average noise levels. Pasadena’s Gold Line stations had the lowest average noise levels, but still ranged from 78 to 81 dB. Every station fail to meet Metro’s 75 dB design limit.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration recommends sound levels not greater than 90 dB for all workers for an eight-hour day. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health recommends exposure not exceed 85 dB for eight hours to “minimize occupational noise-induced hearing loss.” People waiting at stations don’t spend eight hours there; peak-hour Green Line service is every six minutes, but after 7 p.m. trains arrive every twenty minutes.
The decibel scale is logarithmic, so going from 75 to 85 dB doubles the noise level. The study characterizes 80 dB as “the noise of normal city traffic” and “decibel levels in the high 80’s are comparable to noise from trucks or motorcycles passing nearby.” A CityLab article summarizing the study described freeway station noise as like “having like a loud vacuum cleaner running circles around you,” though it quotes Schaffer stating that rider exposure to freeway noise while waiting is less a “health problem” than just “pure annoyance.”
Noise levels tended to be worse at station platforms directly under overcrossings. Offset stations (Lake Avenue Gold Line Station, pictured) are somewhat less noisy. Image via Google maps
Noise levels tended to be worse at stations directly under roadways. Offset stations (Lake Avenue Gold Line Station pictured) are somewhat less noisy. Image via Google maps
Schaffer found that station noise varied based on several factors, including:
- Overhead Structures - Stations directly underneath large roadway bridges (Vermont, Lakewood, and Rosecrans) suffer from noise bouncing off the underside of the road directly above. Stations offset from roadways (Hawthorne, Lake) tended to be somewhat better.
- Traffic Speeds - At several stations (Slauson, Lake), the study attributed reduced noise to nearby cars traveling at slower speeds. Less noise from slower-moving traffic may be a double-edged sword, though, as riders may be exposed to greater air pollution from slower moving cars.
Given the high decibel levels at all of these stations, Schaffer recommends avoiding building future stations in freeway medians. As the study notes, this recommendation is important in planning for the Eastside Gold Line extension along the 60 Freeway, as well as the Sepulveda Pass rail along the 405. In addition to noise issues, these freeway stations expose riders to air pollution, and rarely foster a walkable environment compatible with transit-oriented development.
For existing stations, Schaffer recommends noise reduction measures, primarily involving physical barriers between transit riders and nearby freeway traffic. These barriers include benches, sound walls, and enclosed waiting areas. In addition, dampening materials could be added to existing structures (canopies, the undersides of roadways) that riders wait under.
Metro has been installing plexiglass sound walls as part of a pilot noise reduction program.
Station geometry differs between bus and rail. Mid-freeway rail stations feature a single center platform, while mid-freeway bus stations usually feature two side platforms. Generally, at the bus stations there is also less distance between riders and freeway car lanes. These factors make adding soundwalls more effective at bus stations, so Metro has focused the program there, installing plexiglass sound walls at four of five mid-freeway Silver Line BRT stations: 37th Street, Slauson, Manchester, and Rosecrans.
A rider waits behind recently-installed plexiglass sound walls at the Green Line Harbor Freeway Station, which is located in the middle of both the 110 and the 105 freeways. Photo by Joe Linton
Riders wait behind recently-installed plexiglass sound walls at the Green Line Harbor Freeway Station. Photo by Joe Linton
Earlier this year, Metro installed plexiglass sound walls at the Green Line’s Harbor Freeway station.
Metro spokesperson Jose Ubaldo stated that Metro currently has no plans for additional sound walls at Green Line stations due to “funding constraints” and because “the noise reduction at the Harbor Freeway Station has not been satisfactory.”
Freeway stations are an unquestionably unpleasant aspect of L.A. transit riders’ experience. While the freeway noise may be a minor health risk in and of itself, it is one of numerous factors cumulatively impacting the health of low-income Angelenos. Metro cannot fix all of the hazards that combine to adversely impact riders’ health, but the agency should take further steps to find effective measures to further reduce annoyingly loud car noise at its stations.
Metro leaders frequently reference “lessons learned” from past projects. The lesson Metro should learn here is to never again locate a station in the middle of the freeway.