Multi tracks: a natural pairing of music and public transport
Music and public transport infrastructure might not seem a natural pairing, but for Adele McCarthy they’re the complementary bookends of a rich education.
One of the leaders of Melbourne’s city-shaping Suburban Rail Loop project, McCarthy is also an accomplished saxophonist and composer, and has juggled her two interests since her days at Monash University studying engineering and music.
“For me there was never a choice to be made. I was determined to study both, and the diversity has really held me in good stead,” says the 37-year-old. “It's a bit like learning a second language; it opens your brain in a different way.”
"I like to see the ways things come together, and to develop the systems and nut out the challenges."
Accomplished in both tenor and baritone saxophone, McCarthy gravitated to music composition during her degree, and these days (time and small child permitting), she likes to compose music at home – “often with an electronic base mixed with contemporary classical”, she says. “I like to see the ways things come together, and to develop the systems and nut out the challenges. A lot of composing, like engineering, is actually problem-solving.”
Although her move into public transport happened “almost by accident”, the parallels between McCarthy’s two pursuits are clear. Having decided to build a career focusing on public policy and sustainability, she was accepted into the Victorian government’s graduate program, where the assumption was made that an engineering degree meant a direct line to infrastructure.
“It’s curious in that I now consider my engineering degree to be effectively a generalist degree – it taught me a strong and pragmatic kind of numeracy, and it gave me systems thinking and problem-solving, which are things that I use every day. But I was lucky to land in the Department of Infrastructure in the public transport division and to help shape the sustainability of the city.”
Wearing the official title of executive general manager, precincts and planning, at the Suburban Rail Loop Authority, McCarthy is instrumental in the oversight of the 90-kilometre, largely underground rail line through Melbourne’s middle suburbs that will eventually connect nearly every metropolitan train line in a ring around the city.
READ: Returning confidence in public transport in a post-COVID-19 world
The biggest infrastructure build in Victoria’s history, the multibillion-dollar project promises to revitalise Melbourne’s middle-ring suburbs and bring the city’s much-touted ‘liveability’ to many more residents.
“The number of times across my career that people have raised the need for something like this with me ... It’s a real commonsense thing that people are wanting to see happen,” says the avid user of both public transport and Melbourne’s patchy network of bicycle lanes.
COVID-19 temporarily cruelled her gigging with the likes of the Lowdown Street Orchestra, a brass ensemble whose repertoire ranges from New Orleans-style jazz to covers of Rage Against the Machine, Led Zeppelin and AC/DC.
But delivering public transport infrastructure is, in many ways, a waiting game as well – as McCarthy personally knows. “When I was a student at the Clayton campus, I lived on the Frankston line and had to leave home about an hour and a half before my first lecture to catch a train and a bus or two buses, and it was even worse if I was out at night rehearsing or playing a gig,” she says. “It’s really nice to come full circle and be involved with delivering something that will improve life for students who are in a similar position.”
Editor's note: Since being interviewed for Monash Life, Adele McCarthy has taken on a new role as Chief Development Officer at Yarra Trams.
