WHEN MP for Hastings Paul Mercurio announced that funding had been secured for a cross-peninsula bus service, he must have realised that it wouldn’t please everybody. Indeed, it has been a century-long debate about how to better connect both sides of the peninsula, and there have been many false starts.
The battle for improved public transport on the peninsula has raged on for more than a century. On 17 April 1925, the Frankston and Somerville Standard announced “Mornington residents are hopeful that the railway from Frankston will be electrified. The work is due to be undertaken next, after the electrification of the Healesville line, which has already been authorised”.
The plan was dashed when on 21 August that year it was reported the Railway Commissioner-in-chief paid Mornington an official visit and told an eager delegation that the Mornington line was not in the works and expressed his belief that “electrification of the line would not pay at this juncture”.
Electrification would never come for the Mornington line, or the “already been authorised” Healesville line for that matter, and after numerous fits and starts the line was closed for commuter trains in 1981.
There was a large group of advocates that campaigned for the reestablishment of the Mornington line as a tourist line, with the potential to become a commuter line in due course. One of the advocates, Malcolm Swaine, was the president of the Mornington Railway Preservation Society from 2008 until 2015.
89-year-old Swaine admits he has seen a lot of changes over his time but reflects on a strong grassroots campaign to try and have the Mornington line preserved. “There were a lot of people involved, and we were fortunate to have people like Brian Stahl and many others who advocated strongly for us,” said Swaine.
While the tourist rail runs between Moorooduc and Mornington, the line from Moorooduc to Baxter remains unrestored. Hope remains for its supporters – Swaine and others successfully lobbied the state government during the construction of Peninsula Link to have the new freeway go over the rail reserve with a bridge to preserve the future possibility of a line.
“I think in reality, now, the best we could hope for is the reconstruction of the line back to Baxter as a tourist rail,” said Swaine. “It would need an extensive amount of work even to do that; to have historical rail vehicles travelling at 30kph along it. To re-establish the line for commuter rail travelling at 100kph would be a magnitude higher cost, as it would essentially have to all be rebuilt. And that’s not to mention the opposition from those living near the ex-rail reserve between Moorooduc and Baxter.
“The dynamics are different with the Stony Point line and the Mornington line too. There was a huge groundswell for a commuter service on the Stony Point line but the emphasis for the Mornington line was more focused on a tourist railway. The other factor in favour of the Stony Point line was industry; BHP as it was known, now BlueScope, that uses it, and of course its importance to any future port development.”
Swaine also explained the limitations of a Frankston to Mornington line travelling to Baxter before branching off. “Essentially you are travelling along the two longest lengths of a triangle. Back in the day, they began constructing a rail line from Frankston to Mornington directly, travelling parallel with what is now Nepean Highway, but it was abandoned due to local opposition,” said Swaine.
Some form of reinstated rail line to Mornington from Baxter, even a tourist service, could tie in with the proposed electrification of the Frankston line to Baxter. The business case for duplicating and electrifying the Frankston line to Baxter was released in 2020, putting the cost at between $1.3b to $1.5b. The Morrison government committed $225m to the extension, but the state government was not keen to pick up the rest of the cost (Budget sinks rail hopes for Baxter, The Times, 2/12/20).
At this year’s federal election, the Liberals reaffirmed their commitment to spend $900m on the extension. The funding is unlikely to be anywhere near enough to complete the project with the projected $1.5b from five years ago expected to have increased substantially.
“At the last federal election, the Liberal Party committed up to $900 million for a full business case, early works, and construction of the long-overdue Frankston to Baxter Rail line upgrade,” said MP for Flinders Zoe McKenzie.
“Labor failed to match this commitment, won government, and it is now incumbent on them to show that they are serious about improving transport on the peninsula.
“The next real opportunity for progress will come at the 2026 state election, where responsibility for most road and public transport funding lies. I hope the voters of the Mornington Peninsula back the plans of our local Liberal candidates and MPs.”
At a recent advocacy trip to Canberra by the Committee for Frankston and Mornington Peninsula, Frankston mayor Cr Kris Bolam and Mornington Peninsula Shire mayor Cr Anthony Marsh, it was agreed: “The electrification and duplication of the Frankston line to Baxter is not a short or medium-term solution given the lack of political will, government funding and priorities, and community appetite. All attendees agreed that alternative options to improving the Stony Point line should be further explored and advocated” (Road and rail plans top Canberra agenda, The Times 2/9/25).
The dormant electrification of the Frankston line to Baxter is dependent on unwilling participants putting in extensive funding, unlike the new cross-peninsula bus which has been funded but has no commencement date.
The new bus service travels from Hastings to Mornington via Tyabb and Moorooduc, beginning at the intersection of High Street and Hendersons Road in Hastings and terminating at Tanti Avenue in Mornington.
The bus line does not cover Somerville, an issue that attracted the ire of many residents of Western Port’s most populous town. “Why would you have a bus service that leaves out Somerville? It has 15,000 residents, which is the population of Tyabb and Hastings combined!” said David Livingstone, secretary of the Somerville Business Group Inc.
“We are calling on Paul Mercurio to look at this and consider the negative impact leaving Somerville out from the proposed bus route will have on Somerville and its struggling businesses.
“We have offered an alternative that would see the bus travel in a circular route along Eramosa Road in one direction and Mornington Tyabb Road in the other, taking in Somerville, Tyabb and Hastings. We believe this would only add a few minutes to the overall trip.”
Mercurio, whose electoral office is in Somerville, is sympathetic but pragmatic. “I understand the disappointment that Somerville has not been included,” Mercurio told The Times. “It doesn’t mean something can’t be done in the future. For me, it is just a matter of getting it established and perhaps fine tuning it down the road.
“It was a battle to get a cross-peninsula bus established, and one my predecessor and all those that came before him, failed to achieve. “I am proud that we’ve been able to get the 886 cross-peninsula bus going and coupled with free public transport for youths under 18 from 1 January next year, believe the people of Western Port will be much better served than they were.”
The cross-peninsula bus service will be the first time in 44 years that any form of permanent cross-peninsula transport has been in place. Little did the peninsula’s earliest advocates know, when refused electrification of the Mornington line in 1925, that the issue would still be being discussed a century later. The solution may be imperfect, but at least it is something.
First published in the Frankston Times – 16 September 2025
