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Grenda Transit Management Grenda's to relocate and build $14m Head Office and Bus Depot in Dandenong After 54 years in Foster St, Dandenong, Grenda Corporation has committed to moving and expanding its operations. John Lenders, Minister for Finance and Major Projects, Peter Brown, Mayor of the City Of Greater Dandenong, Vic Urban CEO, Prue Sanderson and other Vic Urban and Council representatives visited Grenda’s Bus Depot today to view plans and a presentation about the development. In 2007, Grenda will relocate to a new $14 million state-of-the-art facility south of the railway line in Brighton Road that will serve as the company’s corporate head office and bus depot for Grenda's Bus Services. The Grenda Corporation operates buses and transit systems that deliver value for money, service excellence, passenger safety, cutting edge technology, and genuine customer focus. Grenda's businesses in manufacturing and public transport have an annual turnover of around $260 million a year. The company employs around 800 people in Victoria with 60% of its workforce located in Dandenong. It has 400 buses in its Melbourne fleet. “We have negotiated with VicUrban, as part of the Revitalising Central Dandenong Initiative, to move across the rail line from our current location in Foster Street. This will enable us to meet the demand for extra bus services and house our increasing staff numbers,” explains Mr. Geoff Grenda, C.E.O. and grandson of the founder the late George Grenda. In 2002, Grenda’s approached the City of Greater Dandenong, stating they needed to redevelop their current Foster Street site and that they wished to buy the dissecting roads and consolidate the site. “In December 2007, we will move to the south of the railway line in Brighton Road on the area know as "parcel C". Sad in some ways as our current property has been our home for a long time, but the move will give us the opportunity to build a state-of-the-art facility that better caters for our staff and the needs of the business,” says Mr. Grenda. Grenda’s has been in discussion with VicUrban concerning the sale of the current site for the redevelopment as part of the Revitalising Central Dandenong Initiative. The new Grenda Depot will streamline operational arrangements and put the company in a good position to deliver the additional services that will flow from the Victorian Government's ‘Meeting Our Transport Challenges’ plan. Under this plan, the Government will fund a $1.4 billion bus service upgrade. A ten-year, $646 million bus improvement program has been developed and $178 million has been committed for the first four years of the program. Five bus routes operated by Grenda (811, 812, 813, 827 and 848) are included in the first traunch of the four year program and will extend operation hours to at least 6am-9pm on weekdays, 8am-9pm Saturdays, and new 9am-9pm on Sundays and public holidays. “Once we heard the Government announcement we needed to ensure we were well positioned to respond to the opportunities. The first one and perhaps the easiest to put into place is increased hours of service, Grenda’s has the buses already but we need to increase the number of drivers to cover the additional operating hours. Coincidentally the move and consolidation will enable us to put on and train more staff in a much better environment than we currently have,” enthuses Mr. Grenda. “Once all the new services are in place, travellers will benefit even further from a much more cohesive system that makes travel by bus in Melbourne a real alternative. “We have many routes that run on 45 minute to 1 hour headways and it is very hard for anyone to plan a trip around this sort of frequency. The new services should help fix this problem. We also have the majority of our services finishing early in the evening so anyone who catches a late night train out from the city must either drive to the station or catch a cab. This is also being addressed,” explains Mr. Grenda. Grenda Corporation believes that bus travel has many benefits over other forms of public transport but needs to be considered as part of a larger integrated plan. “Melbourne has an extensive rail network and can move a lot of people in the peaks, but buses are the feeders to this system and are also used as a service extension into the outer suburbs where the train line stops. They also act as the cross network links”. “The advantage of buses over rail is that the capital investment and recurrent costs are a fraction of rail and the lead time required to introduce new buses into the system is also a fraction of that for fixed rail. They also allow greater flexibility in planning, as the routes can be altered to suit a shifting population,” he says.
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