Appears in the weekly Toxic Custard newsletter
High-frequency trains (all day, every day) are critical for any big city, to ensure large numbers of people can get around quickly and easily. As a PTUA study found some years ago, Melbourne is one of the few big world cities that doesn’t have them. To draw an analogy, it’s as if outside peak hour, ... [More]
I don’t seem to have many photos from October 2004 for my post of photos from ten years ago… it must have been a dry month. A slightly out-of-focus photo of the street sign in ACDC Lane, snapped a couple of weeks after it was renamed on October 1st 2004. It’s in the news this ... [More]
Five years ago today I posted this video: A Day on the Trains. The footage for it was gathered over the space of a month or two in the dying days of the Connex Melbourne Empire in late 2009, and it was designed to capture a few scenes I thought might be changing in the ... [More]
Since our last exciting episode, PTV have made a number of revisions to the draft rail map. Here’s the latest version: (Click to see it larger, and uncropped) As I said back in April, I really like this new design, which better represents how the rail network operates. Changes since that earlier draft that I ... [More]
This article by The Age’s Josh Gordon last week raises a really good point about the East West Link Stage 1 that needs to be remembered: The up-front cost of $2 billion contributed by the State is not the total actual cost to Victorians. It’s also not the construction cost — long thought to be ... [More]
Last night this Google Streetview car was cruising along William Street outside Flagstaff station. The driver waved back as I took the photo. It’ll be interesting to see how long the photos it was (well, may have been) gathering take to get online. Last time it was over a year, but from what I hear ... [More]
As has been noted before, Olympic Doughnuts survived the rebuild of Footscray station. This was apparently so important that the Premier made special mention of it when the new facility opened: The other area that Iâll make a brief comment on is I was out at Footscray this morning as part of the Regional Rail ... [More]
This is Deer Park station. (Superb pic snapped a few years ago by my friend Tony.) And this is the new pod for Protective Services Officers at Deer Park station. According to the official list, PSOs are now deployed there. Marcus Wong’s PSO tracking spreadsheet says they started there on July 1st. Deer Park of ... [More]
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 ... [More]
After buying the new livingroom hi-fi, my thinking was I want a device for the kitchen that does DAB+ for digital radio (eg music such as Double-J without relying on the vagaries of the internet connection) and can also do AirPlay (eg for music from iTunes on the Mac). Devices that do both DAB+ and ... [More]
Another in my series of posts of ten year old photos: some snaps from September 2004… I don’t seem to have many of interest this month, but oh well. Collins Street and Elizabeth Street, a snap not used in this blog post. Trams were turning around here for a special event up ahead for Olympians ... [More]
Lego MCG at Myer toy department, Emporium If you try to steal this tram seat, it could get messy. Flowerpots. Many flowerpots. At Gazi, the modern Greek restaurant in the old Herald Sun building. Lots of these ads around the place at the moment. What is it? Some kind of big survey thing run by ... [More]