Access to any public transport stop or station is arguably the most important aspect of its operation. The frequency or attractiveness of your services doesn’t matter if nobody can actually get there.
With this in mind, I and many thousands of other people have been dealing with an extremely frustrating situation at Box Hill over the past few months (and years – but we’ll get to that later).
Firstly a quick introduction to those who may be unfamiliar with Box Hill. It is one of the largest and most important public transport interchanges outside of Melbourne’s CBD. It is the terminus of the second-busiest tram route in Melbourne (route 109), one of the busiest bus interchanges with 15 well-used routes and the tenth-busiest station in metropolitan Melbourne.
Many people change between different routes and modes here every day. To facilitate this, a brand new railway station and bus interchange were built when the Station Street level crossing was removed in 1983. The railway station is now underground with Box Hill Central Shopping Centre at ground level and the bus interchange on the roof.
Because the buses stop on the upper level there are two single-width escalators provided at ground level. One for people going up and the other for people going down. These are located close to the entrance to the underground railway station, providing relatively direct and easy access.
On or about the 10 December 2024 the down escalator here stopped working. Temporary yellow fences were erected and some small signs installed a few weeks later.
With the escalator broken the only way to get from the rooftop bus stops and back down to ground level is to use the grimy and urine-stained internal stairs or tiny and slow lift on the other side of the building.
Not only is this an unpleasant experience but it adds precious minutes to a journey. This may not sound like much but it could mean the difference between making or missing a connecting service. And in some cases you could be waiting for 30 minutes or longer for the next bus or train.
Importantly this adds a lot of extra time for older people or people with a disability who may be able to walk but not very quickly.
Perhaps the worst part of all this is the situation on the rooftop. The path leading from the stairs and the lift opens out onto a crossing of the service road where buses run. This is right next to the top of the steep ramp up leading up from Station Street. Buses need to accelerate to make it up the ramp and then have to immediately make a right turn straight into this zebra crossing.
This leaves drivers with only a few seconds to react to any people who may be using the crossing, which at the moment is many more than usual. Sometimes a bus laying over is parked next to the crossing too, further reducing sightlines and increasing the safety risks (as you can see in the photo below).
Nearly a month later in early January 2025 the escalator was still not fixed.
Seeing as nothing appeared to be happening I contacted PTV through their website. I asked what was happening, outlined the problems for passengers and requested information when we could expect this to be fixed.
For some reason my enquiry was forwarded to Metro Trains, who responded a few days later. Someone appeared to have confused my enquiry about the Box Hill Bus Station with Box Hill Railway Station and advised accordingly. I replied to this effect and didn’t hear back for another few weeks. So I sent a follow up reminder and eventually received a response in early February.
This advised me that the escalator is maintained by Box Hill Shopping Centre and gave me the details to contact Centre Management myself. I then called PTV to check what was going on. They told me the same thing, expanding that there was apparently nothing they could do.
I should mention here that the escalator is still out of action and has been broken for a total of about 60 days. The sign that used to inform people has now disappeared and many people go through to the top of the escalator only to find that it’s still not working and with no information on the detour.
With the problems I mentioned before, this kind of inconvenience and unattractive alternative access can well be enough to turn people off using public transport altogether.
Frankly I find it quite surprising that the primary access to one of the busiest bus interchanges in Melbourne can just be closed for two whole months without any intervention by the authority that is responsible for said interchange. Notwithstanding who owns or operates the infrastructure, I would suggest that PTV should be the ones pestering the shopping centre to repair it as quickly as possible and not pushing this responsibility onto individual passengers.
It is not the first time that this has happened either. Over the past few years there have been several other times where one of these escalators was broken for weeks or months on end. The one that I remember most vividly was in late 2016, when the up escalator broke in late November and wasn’t fixed until early January 2017.
This is not something unique to Box Hill. Southern Cross Station famously has constant problems with its escalators, also under the jurisdiction of a private company. And I’m sure there are similar examples around Australia where access to stops and stations is fully or partly controlled by an entity different to the one that operates public transport.
At the very least these escalators should be left without barriers so that people can use them as stairs.
But a longer-term solution here is for PTV to either take the responsibility themselves for access to public transport stops and stations like this or have much stronger agreements with other entities that are responsible to ensure that access is maintained and broken infrastructure repaired in a timely manner.
At the time of writing the Box Hill escalator is still not fixed, so I have created this handy timer here: https://philam.github.io/days-since-box-hill-escalator/
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