A RAIL service from Horsham to Ballarat would make life a lot easier for university student Georgia Maroske.

Miss Maroske moved from Horsham to Melbourne at the start of the year to study medicine at Monash University.

She uses a bus service from Horsham before boarding a train at Ballarat for her journey to the city.

She said the limited number of bus services made the trip a long and frustrating process, because buses could be easily held up in traffic and were often overcrowded.

She said not only would a train service mean valuable extra study time, but also that she could travel home more often.

“I've found the system can be quite slow. What is a four-hour trip in a car has often become a six-hour trip for me due to bus timetabling,” she said.

“For example, if the bus goes through Rupanyup instead of going straight from Horsham to Ballarat, that can add 20 to 30 minutes to your trip.

“Also I've found the buses are arriving well before the train leaves Ballarat for Melbourne, so you're waiting around.”

Miss Marokse said she used public transport to travel to Melbourne for weekends last year, but scheduling made those trips difficult.

“With the timetabling, it was tough to be able to get to Melbourne on a Friday evening and travel back on a Sunday,” she said.

“The timetables seemed to be more suited to people leaving Melbourne for the weekend. They were more suited to people from the city than people from outside the city.”

Miss Maroske said while she could study quite easily on a train, it was tricky on a bus. 

“It’s dead time. You can make use of your time on the train a lot better,” she said.

“On a bus it’s hard and you’re distracted keeping track of where you are.”

Miss Maroske has travelled home to Horsham once since starting university.

“I study at the Clayton campus – which is east of the city – so that makes my trip even longer,” she said.

“There are a lot of altered services too in Melbourne at the moment with rail works happening, so it's just a big trip all round. If there was a train through to Horsham I would travel home more.”

Miss Maroske said while the lack of services made travel hard, she found most services ran on time.

“I've found them  to be very prompt, which is good because there are only a few each day so you want to get on a service and have it run to time,” she said.

“I think their time estimates are generally very accurate.”