Melbourne's Southern Cross Station is a gateway for commuters and visitors to the city, but experts say secret data shows the air quality poses a health risk to workers and passengers.
  • In short: Data detailing the air quality at Melbourne’s Southern Cross Station has been released for the first time.
  • It shows nitrogen dioxide levels in parts of the station have regularly been more than 90 times the guidelines set by the World Health Organization.
  • The Victorian government and the station’s operator say they’ve been meeting Australian workplace standards.
  • tombruzzo
    4·
    9 months ago

    Also how they renamed it Southern Cross from Spencer Street. The name has nothing to do with where it is geographically so visitors to Melbourne get completely lost getting to and from it

    • BakuEnglish
      2·
      9 months ago

      Yeah. To be honest though, I think it would’ve been a good idea to just call it Melbourne Central, and rename actual Melbourne central to southern cross, or something else. When I was younger/before I moved into the city, looking at the PTV journey planner and trying to figure out how to get to Melbourne by putting in “Melbourne” always confused me

      On vlines journey planner at least they call it Melbourne Southern Cross, unlike PTV.

      • cuavas
        1·
        9 months ago

        Naming Melbourne Central and Watergardens stations after shopping centres was always a stupid idea. Shopping centre branding changes, and people want to know where a station is located in terms of suburbs, roads, other landmarks, etc.

        North Melbourne Station is also poorly named. It originally served the northern lines, when they still only had access to the CBD via the Inner Circle line, and was near the North Melbourne freight yard before that was closed. But it isn’t actually in North Melbourne, and the two reasons for calling it North Melbourne are no longer applicable. They were going to rename it to West Melbourne and call the new station on the corner of Arden and Laurens streets (which is actually in North Melbourne) North Melbourne, but now they’ve decided to keep the name for North Melbourne Station and call the new station Arden Station.

        Renaming Spencer St Station to Southern Cross was always stupid, and I always said putting a roof on a station with diesel trains was going to be a health issue for workers and anyone else who has to spend substantial time there. But Bracks wanted a bigger monument to himself than Jeff’s Shed, so here we are.