 Hey everyone and welcome back to Transit Explained. With only 2 million people, you might not think a ton about Perth in Western Australia and you might expect it to have an underwhelming public transit system. Light rail, BRT. As it turns out though, Perth has one of the most interesting and truly impressive small regional rail networks out there, with over 180 kilometers of tracks and over 70 stations. And it's growing and improving massively. So in this latest video, let's see just what makes Perth, which is actually one of the world's most isolated major cities, just so you know, so special. To help me make more Transit Explained videos covering places from Australia to Austria to Alberta, consider supporting the channel on Patreon. Perth is located in southwestern Australia, nearly 3,000 kilometers from Melbourne or Jakarta, the closest big cities. Looking at the city itself, Perth stretches nearly 100 kilometers from north to south along the coast, centered around the confluence of the Swan and Canning rivers. The city's CBD is north of this point and is surrounded by several expressways, but that isn't quite as bad as it sounds as we'll soon see. Perth's main railway station, Perth Station, is located at the north of the CBD, while the city's airport is located roughly 10 kilometers due east. It's also probably worth noting that Perth's main industries tend to be in the resource sector, with mining being a massive industry in Western Australia. Now let's dive into the current rail network. Perth's rail network is composed of five main lines, of which three were largely constructed all the way back in the late 1800s. These are the Midland line, which has 15 stations over 16 kilometers of track running out to the east of the city, the Fremantle line, which has 17 stations on roughly 19 kilometers of route and runs to the southwest of the city, and the Armadale-Thorneley line, which runs to the southeast of the city, which is roughly 32 kilometers long and with 21 stations, as well as a short branch to Thorneley. All three of these lines run into Perth Station above ground, with through running between the Midland and Fremantle lines. Perth's railway network's fate changed in the 1970s, when the Fremantle line was cabashed as underinvestment took a toll and ridership fell. This seemed to unite people in their desire for transit service, and the next government brought the line back. Improvements continued to pace with the network's electrification in the 1990s, which brought it modern trains and much better service. That said, the older lines as nice as they were struggled to keep up with the sprawling form of the city, which as mentioned before was mostly north-south along the coast. This led to the construction of the Jindalip line in the 1990s. This new rail line runs rather uniquely for a proper regional rail style line down the middle of the rather curvy Mitchell Freeway, with a total of 13 stations along the 40 kilometer line. The line is designed for top speeds of up to 130 kilometers per hour, faster than metro style services, which are more frequently seen in the median of highways. The Jindalip line is also a great example of a transit line using a highway right-of-way to great benefit, as it exits the right-of-way to serve the center of Jindalip proper before returning to the corridor. Now, the massive ridership success of the Jindalip line turned focus on areas south of the city, and another line was constructed through the early 2000s, known as the Mandra line, for the second largest city in Western Australia, which it connects with Perth. The line is 70 kilometers long overall, with 13 stations, which is a really wide station spacing, and a significant portion from Perth's CBD to Quenana in the median of the Quenana Freeway. The line was also rather interesting because as it turns out, along the Jindalip line, it was the beginning of a transition and approach with rail and Perth. Stations feature large bus terminals where convenient transfers can be made to services throughout the surrounding suburbs, both feeding the rail line and providing very useful last mile connections, something that North American cities could learn massively from. The links to the Jindalip line don't stop there. The Mandra line is also of course notable for using highway median running extensively with high top speeds, but it also actually threw runs with the Jindalip line. When the Mandra line was constructed, a new tunnel was built through Perth CBD, adding a new southern station known as Elizabeth Key, and new underground platforms known as Perth Underground, which are linked to Perth Station. Furthermore, these tunnels allow the Mandra and Jindalip lines to connect with no-grade crossings of the other lines, allowing better frequency. The Mandra line, like the Jindalip line, has been incredibly successful from a ridership point of view, but with it, efforts have transitioned to what's next. You see, while other cities in Australia are mainly focusing on single major transit expansion projects, Perth is doing a bunch of projects under a coordinated program known as MetroMet. For some reason, I didn't appreciate the scope of the program despite people constantly commenting about it, but it is legitimately massive. The first big project is the extension of the Jindalip line north to the rapidly growing community of Yanchip, with three stations and 14 kilometers of new track. The Thorneley branch of the Armadale line is also being extended along a freight corridor over to Coburn Central on the Mandra line, creating the first link in the system outside of the CBD. This extension will add two stations and 14 more kilometers of track, but will also mean the original planned alignment of the Mandra line will actually come to fruition. The nice thing about this extension is that it will actually connect into the Mandra line, so services could hypothetically through run towards the east of the city someday if desire was there. In addition to the extensions, two whole noon lines are being constructed to the east of the city. The new airport line will branch off of the Midland line with a tunnel which will connect Perth's airport at two stations serving the two terminals, which are across the airfield from one another, as well as another station to the east at High Wycombe. The new air rail link is set to open in a few months and will mean that Perth has an air rail link before even Melbourne. Travel time between the CBD and the airport should be around 20 minutes. As it turns out, the second new line to Ellenbrook will also be constructed as an effective branch of the Midland line east of the city, turning north at the same point the airport line enters its tunnel to the airport. The Ellenbrook line will have 13 stations across 21 kilometers of track and will provide high quality rail service to the northeast sector of the city. Now with such an extensive rail network, you might imagine Perth has loads of different rolling stock in operation, but that's not actually the case. Since older models of train were retired in the 90s with the electrification of the network, which uses 25 kVAC as opposed to DC power, seen in Sydney and Melbourne, because of its extensive length and much younger age. As a result of this, the entire Perth rail fleet at present consists of two train models. At the same time, once again Perth rail network uses another different rail gauge, using 1067mm gauge, as with main lines in Japan as well as rail in Queensland. I actually think that if Perth had a wider gauge, it would also probably have higher top train speeds. The first model is the A-Series, which was manufactured by AdTrans and is 2.9 meters wide and 24 meters long in walkthrough married pairs. These trains have a top speed of 110 kph. The newer model is the B-Series, manufactured by Bombardier, which usually operate in two 3-car walkthrough sets paired up to form 6-car trains. These trains have a higher top speed and service of 130 kph, useful as they're intended primarily for use on the Mandra and Dundalop lines. Both the A and B-Series trains feature two doors per side per car. Now as part of Metronet, Perth will be taking delivery of new C-Series trains. These will be made by Alstom and will come in a 6-car fully walkthrough set with mixed seating, three doors per side per car, which is still less than you could hypothetically have on a car this 24 meters long, as well as no carpet, a somewhat unusual feature of the older trains. Now along with the new trains, Perth also plans on deploying CBTC. During peak times, trains on the network already run as often as every 5 minutes, so a new system should be able to enable as many as twice as many services during peak times. That said, I really hope ETCS is used, rather than a proprietary system, as is being done in Queensland and my hometown of Toronto's regional rail. Now Perth's rail network is really impressive for metro area of only around 2 million people, given it will have nearly 100 stations on 250km of track at the completion of Metronet. To compare this to Canada's equivalent resource town, which is not that dissimilar in size, Calgary, Perth has roughly 2 times the station count and over 4 times more track kilometers. That said, both cities do have things in common, like a highly radial network and downtown free transit zones, which helps to get office workers and visitors on rail downtown. Perth is also well known for its highway median operations, which are among the most extensive and interesting in the world, especially with the combination of highway median operation and feeder bus services. The natural question to ask is which next for the city after Metronet? I'd suggest Perth's rail network does have a problem post Metronet, in that it's starting to lack core capacity, with so many lines feeding into the east of Perth station and the Midland line in particular. To help with this, you could probably quad track the Midland line from the junction with the airport and Ellenbrook lines, while at the same time considering another line or two west of the city's center, which would enable more through running operations in proving efficiency in Central Perth. At the same time, with the lonely line being extended to Coburn, the first parts of a rail loop have sort of been formed, and extensions to High Wickham and Guilford seem very doable in the future. Nonetheless, they were even talking about this for a city of only around 2 million in the English-speaking world is crazy. I might just need to reconsider moving to Montreal and move to Perth instead. Thanks for watching!