“They do need to look at whether the infrastructure is up to scratch,” Bowen told ABC radio on Thursday. “In some of the suburban areas,there is no fencing around rail lines. There are long gaps where people can get onto the tracks.”

On average,there are more than seven instances of trespassing on Melbourne train tracks each day,Metro reports,and 2591 people trespassed on the city’s network in the 12 months to July.

There are about 9250 CCTV cameras across the network,plus anti-trespass ground panels (aspiky ground surface covering designed to make it difficult for pedestrians to access rail corridors),and thermal imaging cameras to monitor and prevent illegal activity.

Metro Trains safety manager Adrian Rowland said only 25 per cent of the Melbourne network is adequately fenced,which does little to deter committed trespassers,including graffiti artists and copper thieves.

Rowland said retrofitting stations with doors is not as straightforward as installing more fencing,since the train doors of various carriage models stop at different positions. He said Metro was currently speaking to international manufacturers about a solution.

“We don’t want something that people can just hop over,” Rowland told the ABC. “We know we have nuisance trespasses;we have people who are deliberately going to try and get there to commit crime.”

Rowland said 46 people are struck by trains in Melbourne each year on average and there are another 450 near-misses where drivers are forced to apply the emergency brakes to avoid hitting someone.

“People who have been inconvenienced recently would have experienced what happens when it gets really complex,and we can’t react as quickly as we would like,” Rowland said.

“What we need to do is more on the prevention side to actually reduce the number of trespassers.

“We think level crossings,where they’ve been removed,have actually reduced activity in that area. But if you look at the overall figures,it probably means that the problem has gone somewhere else.”

An average of 84 people die on rail networks nationwide each year,according to a Victorian Department of Transport report.

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