Another in my series of photos from ten years ago: October 2013.
Travellers Aid had a fundraiser selling Myki card holders. I love the design of the top of the crown.
Works in Elizabeth Street didn’t stop cars coming through the Bourke Street Mall, but it did stop them continuing westward, causing tram delays.
…and resulting in scenes reminiscent of Austin Powers.
The works in Elizabeth Street resulted in platform stops outside the GPO – shown here during construction. This means accessible tram services in this section, at least when low floor trams are in use, mostly on route 19. Unfortunately in 2023, the northern section of the route still has no platform stops.
An old MX dispenser, awaiting pick up.
Thankfully they no longer allow ads all over the windows on trains… though trams and buses still suffer from them.
Here’s an example of less intrusive advertising around public transport – at Flagstaff station.
At the time, motorcycle parking in the CBD was a free-for-all, with the guidelines ignored most of the time, often impeding pedestrians. I ended up doing an extensive blog post about it. To their credit, City of Melbourne has now added dedicated on-street motorcycle parking spaces, and banned it on most narrow and heavily-trafficked footpaths.
Metro works nowadays tend to be a mix of long wordy notices, and calendars of varying legibility and accuracy. Once upon a time they used maps.
Over on V/Line, they were still using H cars – refurbished Harris suburban carriages from the 1950s. (In 2023 these are all retired on the way to being retired, and they’re pushing ahead with also retiring the 1980s N cars, despite huge demand that might indicate they should hold onto them for now.)
Finally, the quirky tram sculpture at the corner of Flinders and Spencer Streets.
8 replies on “Old photos from October 2013”
Wow, I’ve never seen the tram sculpture. Is it still there?
@roger, yes it is! https://maps.app.goo.gl/E1C15YHUmPGTxAjB6
Works notices with maps should make a return!
I believe the H cars are still actually in service but probably not for much longer
Buses from Belgrave to Blackburn followed by buses from Burnley to Parliament in 2013, nothing new here ten years on! Well, I suppose it could have had the hat trick of no City Loop services running while still dumping everyone at Parliament…
What wasn’t shown in the poster is that the stated 30-minute increase in journey times isn’t due to the replacement bus, but the time spent waiting at the platform for the next Belgrave train after getting off the bus!
The H cars are actually still in service – a number of sets have been put into storage, but there are still a handful of weekday peak runs in the current timetable that use them.
@Daniel, @Marcus – thanks for that. I should have checked!
In fact I found one of my recent photos from Southern Cross, about 2 months ago, shows an H-set on platform 4. https://www.flickr.com/photos/danielbowen/53291955084/
Brussels also uses maps to indicate planned closures/engineering works. Although instead of using the whole system diagram/map, a more local map with street names and which is geographically accurate is used. Here’s what it looks like: https://www.stib-mivb.be/irj/go/km/docs/WEBSITE_RES/Attachments/Iv/2023-11/Buyl_2310.jpg .
BTW, it’s in French and Dutch.