So a bit about me, by day I'm a construction designer, in my spare time I like to travel around Australia, by night I come up with hot take on what Australian cities need to do to improve their public transport.

So, I hear Adelaide is sprawling along Port Wakefield Rd. 

Sprawl can be managed if the transport is there from day one, and fortunately there is already a rail corridor is there.

Now, electric trains are good, but installing the wiring is time consuming and this rail line would be quiet initially so it only needs smaller trains.

 Overseas, Battery trains are being used, which means you only need a short section of overhead conductor bar at the end stations to charge the train, plus a section at Dry Creek depot.

Otherwise, trains run 40km off wire, well within the 80-150km range of current battery trains.

The advantage of doing this is that you can achieve higher speeds than buses, so people in these growth areas will get into the habit of using trains early, potentially avoiding traffic growth.

The line also makes use of the cross town link through Wingfield, and at Port Adelaide, track upgrades would mean Port Dock gets put onto the new line, removing the current "branched" arrangement which actually halved the efficiency of that line.

Probably a few hundred million for some battery trains, and then say another $320m for 12 stations with car parks and some housing zoned around the stations (Like at St Clair)

Now the main compromise I've made is that you have to change trains at Salisbury interchange to reach the CBD, but the time cost of that could be compensated by making Galwer trains permanently run on a fast pattern that skips all those "dead" stations along the edge of Parafield ariport.

But, if we do my [O-Ring ](https://www.reddit.com/r/Adelaide/comments/1v75xrf/how_id_sort_out_adelaides_buses_the_oring/)O-Bahn extension to Salisbury, that suburb could become a nice little hub :)



Sorting out transport in the North West - Port Dock Two Wells Line