The hi fi box was a big hit with my niece (and nephew)
Having obtained a government-provided “boarding pass” (they were handed out with some MXs — I missed out but managed to get one via Kev, who saved it for me), I went searching for the airport rail link. Strangely enough it wasn’t listed on the network status board.
A while back I bought some shirts from that Charles Tyrwhitt mob who advertise a lot. Pretty nice shirts, and I’ll probably buy more from them. One thing’s for sure though, they WILL send you promotional catalogues and emails afterwards. You won’t feel neglected.
The channel 7 news the night following the Endeavour Hills stabbing. You know things are serious when they’re doing five live crosses for one story.
Just a bunch of trams rolling down the road? Not quite — if you look closely, they’re going the wrong way, heading north along the southbound track. They were headed by a Yarra Trams car with flashing lights. There was an underground fire at the corner of William Street and Flinders Lane, and Yarra Trams decided to move the trams backwards rather than have them stuck for an indefinite period. For reasons that escape me, this is known in tram circles as running “bang road”, and is rare enough that Marcus Wong shot video of it.
For some months now this signage at Bentleigh station (and others with more than 2 platforms) has been incomplete. Despite repeated queries over several months via Twitter, it hasn’t been fixed. (I’ve been querying Metro, though they apparently need to chat to PTV to get it resolved.)
Here’s how packed some CBD trams can get — really testing the new E-class trams’ theoretical capacity. Now, how packed will it be from January when free CBD tram rides are introduced? Packed enough, I suspect, that I told a PTV survey person several weeks ago that, in all honesty, the change is likely to reduce my use of CBD trams — remembering that I have a Yearly Myki, so if I opt-out due to increased crowding, my paid rides will have been replaced by freeloaders.
Spotted in Bourke Street one lunchtime.
Seddon and Yarraville both have campaigns against paid parking on at the moment. I’ve gotta say, having had the need to drive to both recently, and having spent ages (particularly in Yarraville) looking for parking, I think I’d prefer having a price signal to discourage people from staying longer than necessary and/or to go without their cars (both centres are quite well served by public transport).
Lois Lane in Yarraville. No sign of Superman. Or Clark Kent, for that matter.
On the western suburbs train lines, there’s only a service every 40 minutes on Sunday mornings. This is the result: the 10am train from Footscray to the city, packed to the gills. The Show is on, but even after North Melbourne, plenty of people stayed on board going into the CBD. Not every square centimetre of floorspace was occupied, but it’s not good enough when the rail system has plenty of spare capacity, and should be trying to attract extra trips. High time extra trains ran on Sunday mornings.
Both South Yarra and Footscray have six platforms. Sadly only one of them has live information on the concourse for all six platforms.
In the past few days rubbish bins have been removed at Melbourne’s major railway stations. Apparently the transparent design wasn’t considered secure enough. Here’s what they looked like. (I snapped this pic last week to email in to Crikey, whose people had apparently never seen/noticed them. Crikey didn’t use it, but The Age did.)
8 replies on “Photos from last week”
With regards to the signage at Footscray, it doesn’t necessarily need information for all 6 platforms. Platform 3 is all inbound V/line services, which do not take passengers, so signing them would be pointless. At the moment, there are only 2 services per hour that stop at platform 4, both of which are after the trains listed on that board already (I’m assuming this was a mid week photograph). They do show up closer to their departure times.
I’ve no idea why they needed correspondence from New York and Dubai for the stabbing, as well as in front of the mosque in Hallam, but not at the Shopping Centre next door. I was at Endeavour Hills Shopping Centre on Wednesday morning to go to Safeway and the number of both police and media personnel were astounding, but apparently 7 News weren’t there. Also found out I went to school with the perpetrator. Safeway also had one of those umbrella-baggers, despite being in the middle of shopping centre.
The 40 minute Sunday morning services were abolished in April 2011 (if I remember the year and month correctly) were abolished on the Clifton Hill and Burnley groups along with 40 minute Sunday evening services (Eltham-Hurstbridge going to hourly and the rest to half-hourly). It is strange that the same change was not made for the Northern group on Sunday mornings at the same time. Was it because the evening services were shifted to 30 minutes when the Caulfield/South Yarra group were? Or because the current government could only win one of the seats (Essendon) that these lines run through?
Half-hourly trains may not be enough if 40 minute services are packed.
Clifton Hill group lines still have Sunday morning services every 40 minutes.
Trams are another big one for poor Sunday services. Some lines have services every half-hour until later than eleven in the morning. Routes 1 and 8 were upgraded to every 20 minutes at worst a couple of years ago, but it looked like an isolated case with new lines such as 11 and 12 still having half-hourly services on Sunday mornings and evenings.
The last time I was out there, there was no PIDS for outbound V/Line trains at both Footscray and Sunshine.
That is just not ok. Given you have the greatest diversity of lines operating from those platforms, I would say the importance of a PIDS is somewhat larger due to that fact. Soon, you will have Geelong corridor services as well, and are said to be operating every 20 minutes too.
The irony is that #4 at Footscray, was #2, and had a PIDS display for that platform. Why was it removed?
In all fairness, South Yarra, all 6 platforms are Metro, where at Footscray only 4 of the platforms are.
** On the bin removal **
Did some city experiment with ‘bomb proof’ bins?
Why can we not do something similar here?
I know the ratbag ex-councillor who was responsible for naming Lois Lane – and yes the name was chosen deliberately!
Daniel, your bin photo will go down in history (at least until we get our bins back)!
And if you want to keep pushing for Metro to put the info for platform 3 departures back on the Frankston line station signs, Ormond is still lacking it after many months!
Ormond is still lacking PIDs and any sort of upgrades, too. But they have started to do works for the new pedestrian crossing (let’s hope it’s actually useful though). The things I don’t get is that PIDs would be useful at Ormond, and even if the station is coming down “soon”, they can be saved and reinstalled at the new station (or somewhere else on the network) in the meantime. Given I didn’t think it was getting bulldozed within the next 1-2 years, it would have been a nice addition…
Not having travelled through (changing at) South Yarra for a while until recently, I am impressed with their new layout, and the number of signs around. Finally fixing the horror that was there (on entry/interchange congestion, and the on the diets/health of the schoolkids with that cruddy kiosk!).
But I wonder, is there NO information display for the outbound V/Line RRL platform at Footscray? If not, that’s pretty dumb and short-sighted. (I mean, I still can’t believe RRL bypassed North Melbourne to begin with–couldn’t have added that many tens of millions could it? The benefits to all passengers would have been significant. So perhaps there’s a lot of short-sightedness in the project?)
On Sunday morning trains, geez the services are crap still. I can’t believe how late the first trains start. They were that late when I was a kid, and even then I found it a problem (no joke). The half-hour service on the Ringwood corridor on a normal winter Sunday at 9 am meant that the train was as full as a heavy peak load (people crammed in doors at what is usually the “quiet end”) arriving at Richmond. I haven’t been on early Sunday Frankston trains in a while, but I don’t remember it being quite that bad the last time (hopefully it isn’t when I next get one). But Sunday services should really run like Saturday services. Using them I don’t see a difference in loading. I don’t get why the timetable isn’t unified across the weekend entirely. (Something, something, liveability?) Bus timetables especially (new Transdev eastern suburbs timetables have some really good Saturday services now, but Sunday service is then half of that, which makes no sense, unless a LOT more people go to church/etc than I thought!).
I’m amazed that Labor (or even Libs) aren’t trying to sell a cheap PT improvement of “better Sunday trains”. Just put a photo of a full Sunday train next to an ad, and you’ll be able to sell it–then all the fun run participants and the like will also be able to get the train (gotta be a cheaper vote winner than even a level crossing removal).
Charles Tyrwhitt shirts sound very posh. Starting at $39, maybe not so much.
Campbell, tram loadings before 11am on Sundays don’t indicate a need for more frequent services, although there are some quite frustrated faces at tram stops who have been waiting for a long time. Maybe if a more frequent service was in place, people would come. But there won’t be extra people to provide more profits to the overseas owned Yarra Trams.