Lights don’t work, cigarette butts and chewing gum merge underfoot and the wind whips up the complaints of commuters trying to get from one side of the tracks at Broadmeadows to the other without getting wet.
While the state government moves to ban smoking on railway platforms from next year, commuters at ‘Broadie’ have put safety and clean toilets on top of their wish lists.
“It’s one of the worst stations I’ve ever been to,” Cr Adem Atmaca said at the Hume council meeting last week. “The government and the owners of the buildings have a lot to answer for.”
His colleague, Cr Vic Dougall, first raised the state of the station, calling it “filthy, dirty and full of garbage”.
“The male toilets are absolutely disgusting,” Cr Dougall said.
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His appraisal was echoed by Cr Helen Patsikatheodorou, who told the gallery she travelled to Melbourne city centre by train at least three times a week.
“There are lots of dangers and the PSOs [protective services officers] aren’t always around,” she said.
Cr Jack Medcraft said the station had been a disgrace since the 1970s.
“Get Broadmeadows court to put on offenders to clean the station,” he said. “Make them pay and do some constructive work.”
Mayor Geoff Porter agreed Broadmeadows station was not the community hub the council envisaged when it worked for four years to present the state government with a plan for its “revitalisation”.
Commitments were made, projects planned, designs drawn, community consulted, and there was an expectation of good faith. The 2009-10 state budget promised $80.3 million over four years to Broadmeadows to improve public transport connections and bring private sector investment to the revitalisation effort.
But the death knell sounded in May when the Napthine government gave the Frankston train terminal a $13.8 million facelift instead.
“They’ve cancelled the [Broadmeadows] project and where has the money gone? To the guy who holds the balance of power,” said long-serving Labor MP Frank Maguire.
