Ballarat commuters and traders speak out: 'We've been waiting long enough'

Ballarat commuters faced another round of V/Line delays last month, and the frustration has boiled over. Residents across the city — from the outer suburbs of Delacombe to the inner-north around Eureka Street — say years of broken promises on rail frequency upgrades and the long-delayed Western Highway duplication have pushed their tolerance to the limit. The projects, collectively worth more than $2.8 billion in state and federal commitments made between 2021 and 2024, are running behind schedule, and the people who live with the consequences are talking.

The timing matters. Victoria's state budget delivered in May 2026 flagged a $400 million shortfall in regional infrastructure funding, forcing the Department of Transport and Planning to quietly revise delivery timelines on several Central Highlands projects. That budget hit comes as patronage data from V/Line shows the Ballarat line carried roughly 1.9 million passenger trips in the 2024–25 financial year — the highest figure in a decade — yet peak-hour services from Wendouree and Ballarat stations remain capped at a frequency that hasn't changed since 2019.

Platform anger, empty shopfronts

At Wendouree Station on a Wednesday morning this week, passengers waiting for the 7:42 service to Southern Cross described a routine they've learned to dread. A retired nurse from Alfredton said she now adds 40 minutes to any medical appointment in Melbourne because she no longer trusts the scheduled departure to run on time. A construction worker heading to a Footscray site said he'd started driving to Melton and catching the train from there to avoid the uncertainty. Neither spoke for attribution, but both said they'd made submissions to the state government's 2025 regional rail review — a process that closed in November and whose findings have not been publicly released.

On Bridge Street, which cuts through the CBD retail precinct, small business owners paint a related picture. The ongoing works connected to the Ballarat Station precinct upgrade — a project under the Victorian Government's $1.75 billion Regional Rail Revival program — have narrowed pedestrian access near Sturt Street since March. One café operator near the corner of Armstrong Street said foot traffic during the construction period had dropped noticeably on weekdays, though she declined to give a specific figure. The Ballarat Business Council has written twice to the Department of Transport and Planning this year seeking a revised construction timeline and a clearer communications plan for affected traders.

The Western Highway duplication — the stretch between Ballarat and Stawell — sits in a different category of frustration. The 63-kilometre project has been in planning or partial construction since a federal commitment in the 2021–22 budget, but the section west of Beaufort remains single-lane. The TAC recorded 14 serious injury crashes on that corridor in the 2024 calendar year. Residents in Beaufort, 60 kilometres northwest of Ballarat, attended a community information session run by the Western Highway Project Alliance in April and came away describing the process as long on diagrams and short on dates.

What residents are asking for now

Community advocacy group Ballarat Connected, which has been running a petition through the Ballarat Community Health network since April, is calling for three specific actions: the public release of the regional rail review findings, a confirmed timetable for the Wendouree to Ballarat Station frequency upgrade, and a dedicated liaison officer for Bridge Street traders during the precinct works. The group says it has collected more than 1,400 signatures and plans to deliver them to the electorate office of the Member for Ripon in Lydiard Street North before the end of July.

The state government's next regional infrastructure update is scheduled for release ahead of the August parliamentary sitting week. Transport advocacy groups and Ballarat City Council, which passed a resolution in June supporting the petition's core demands, will be watching that document closely. Residents in affected areas can still lodge concerns directly through the Department of Transport and Planning's online community feedback portal, which remains open for the Ballarat Station precinct works through to 31 August 2026.