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Skyrail and the Underline – the maturing of the Caulfield to Dandenong Level Crossing Removal Project

Date: 9月 10, 2024
Category: Insights
Sky Rail 1378 Peter Clarke
Clayton Road / Station Activity Node (which will be removed as part of Suburban Rail Loop to make way for the new connecting station ) Photographer: Peter Clarke

We have arrived at an interesting point in Melbourne’s urban transport history. The Level Crossing Removal Program has matured, the Melbourne Metro Tunnel project is set to open, decisions are being made about an airport train station, and the Suburban Rail Loop is under planning and development.


The planned Suburban Rail Loop (SRL) will align with Clayton station, built as part of the Caulfield to Dandenong Level Crossing Removal Project. The proposed SRL will remove and rearrange the existing open space under the viaducts, designed by ASPECT Studios. At this point, we feel it would be useful to return to a post-occupancy analysis we undertook a few years ago, to gauge how the precinct was performing.

It took a particular and very rare sequence of events to make something like the Caulfield to Dandenong Level Crossing Removal Project happen. In its finished form, the 17-kilometre project defies the conventions that shape new open public spaces. Comprising new train stations, a linear park or rather the Underline, a shared active transport link, and a series of activation nodes containing sports facilities and community spaces, it is the product of some innovative and unusual thinking about how these spaces can work, what they need to succeed, and what they are for. In the years after its completion, we can use the park to figure out whether that thinking is valid using a data-driven approach.

Partnering with Place Intelligence, we conducted a post-occupancy study of how the Underline was used. This involved analysing mobile device location data across 2019 and 2020 from 198,000 unique devices and 20 million signal events to understand how people move through the study area – a swathe of space around Clayton station. We wanted to know how the project was being used. We also wanted an evidence base for future work – by making proposals rooted in data, rather than in suspicion about what might or might not work, we can advance projects that challenge norms. For clients, the study is a demonstration of the project’s impact and proof of a return on a substantial and politically complex investment.
Centre Road South Activity Node, 2019 | Photography: Peter Bennetts
Linear Park, Murrumbeena, 2019 | Photography: Peter Clarke
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Linear Park, Murrumbeena, 2022 | Photography: ASPECT Studios
Linear Park map Study area
Diagram showing the five stations and three linear parks of the Caulfield to Dandenong Level Crossing Removal Project with the blue circle indicating the focus area of this study.
Linear Park, Carnegie, 2019 | Photography: ASPECT Studios
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Linear Park, Carnegie, 2022 | Photography: Peter Bennetts

The study shows activity in and around the park soaring, with people flocking not only to the Underline, but also travelling from the new spaces to the surrounding streets and beyond. Active transport corridors – particularly linear ones – are typically transitory spaces that provide meagre opportunity for lingering. They are for moving people. The study reveals that while the Underline does serve that purpose, it has also become something of a destination in its own right. We can observe visitors dwelling in the project’s grassy park, making use of its seating, and treating the park as somewhere worth spending an afternoon. A surprising finding is that people are willing to travel substantial distances to visit the park, with just over half of the visitors travelling more than six kilometres to be there.

This analysis identified the origin of people visiting the site, showing 52% of users live further then 6km from the project | Map c/o Place Intelligence
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Suggesting both the mobility of the community and potentially the usefulness of the linear park | Graph c/o Place Intelligence
Clayton Road/Station Activity Node, 2019 | Photography: Peter Bennetts
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Clayton Road/Station Activity Node, 2024 | Photography: ASPECT Studios

This intensive activation matters. It has all manner of implications for safety, for instance. During the project’s planning phase, an understandable public concern was that the park – situated beneath a railway viaduct – would become home to all manner of unsociable activity. Instead, the Underline hosts intergenerational activity throughout the day, which creates a kind of passive, community-centred surveillance of the space. This environment in turn generates more activity. The spaces become part of the local vernacular, a place to stage daily life, to see people and to be seen.

This heat map analysis identifies where people are typically within the precinct and broader area. The intensity within the corridor is clearly evident. | Map c/o Place Intelligence
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This heat map analysis shows the high usage of the programmed public open spaces and of course the station and bus interchange | Map c/o Place Intelligence
Carnegie Station, 2019 | Photography: Peter Clarke
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Carnegie Station, 2024 | Photography: ASPECT Studios
People linger, longer
Dwell time is an important metric which measures the amount of time a user spend within a place. Whilst a high proportion of users (55%) could be considered 'transitory', spending less than 10 minutes within the corridor as they move through the space, a significant proportion (45%) spend more than 10 minutes, with 1 in 5 people spending more than 25 minutes within the Underline.

The study highlights how unusual the Underline is, defying typical thinking about what kinds of open spaces can play host to particular types of activation. For one thing, the study tracks a level of activity that, according to convention, should not be taking place on a site this slender and diminutive. For another, it was not co-located with car parking, public toilets, or the kinds of facilities a destination with major play spaces and sports facilities usually would be. Instead, we can observe the way users travel between public transport and activation nodes. This demonstrates how public and active transport connections can be leveraged to provide access – doing away with the need for a major investment in car parking. This is not necessarily a revolutionary idea, but it is a useful point of reference for those interested in reapplying traditional models around a sustainable transport framework.
This map shows the the frequency of users spending more than 10 minutes within a place, indicating locations of high occupation outside of the immediate station environment | Map c/o Place Intelligence
Centre Road Activity Node, 2019 | Photography: Peter Bennetts
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Centre Road Activity Node, 2024 | Photography: ASPECT Studios
This map shows how people are moving around the corridor. It's interesting to see the significant amount of movements within the linear park | Map c/o Place Intelligence
Connections
As a new typology, this was a project that was from the outset defined by unknowns. It was not entirely clear how it should be programmed, or how it would function. With this data we have a clearer picture of how forgotten or overlooked spaces, like the 17-kilometre stretch of land beneath a major piece of transport infrastructure, can positively contribute to life in the city. This knowledge unlocks possibilities for similar projects and helps confirm the validity of some long-held but stagnant proposals that have been tossed around for decades.
The impact of COVID and lockdowns
An interesting side-study was to understand how the use of the Underline changed during and post-Covid lockdowns. Whilst there were no surprises with a dramatic fall in use during the hard lockdowns, there was a drastic increase in the use of the activity nodes relative to other spaces when things opened up and social distancing requirements dropped away.

Everything ASPECT Studios contributed to this project was, in a sense, optional. Bike paths, places to sit and basketball courts did not play a part in achieving the primary goals of relieving congestion on the roads or improving train services. Our thinking was that by committing to the bigger picture parts of the project – using this rare opportunity to look beyond the tracks to improve the surrounding neighbourhoods – it would be possible to achieve something greater for the city. This was a risk, but it was a risk that we can now see was worth taking. Seeing it now still working and bringing joy to the community after 5 years is reward indeed.
Analysis pre and post Covid | Graph c/o Place Intelligence
201811 ASPECT Studios Caulfield Dandenong Rail Peter Bennetts Photography 0022
Centre Road South Activity Node, 2019 | Photography: Peter Bennetts

CLIENT
Level Crossing Removal Authority, Lend Lease and CPB


TEAM
ASPECT Studios, Cox Architects, Aurecon, WSP, March Studios and John Raynor


TRADITIONAL OWNERS & ONGOING CUSTODIANS OF THE LAND
Bunurong Country


LOCATION
Melbourne, Victoria


YEAR
2015 – 2018