All forms of transport, including gunzelly
Alan Kohler does some terrific finance reporting, helping making complex concepts simple. But I think he missed the mark on this opinion piece on trams last week. (It’s only a couple of minutes long, so you may want to watch if you haven’t already seen it, before reading on.) He’s missed some of the history, ... [More]
A quick one, something I edited out of the recent post about the Melton line hybrid (bi-mode) train proposal: peak capacity on RRL. Currently the Ballarat and Geelong lines merge just west of Deer Park, where they run to Sunshine, joined there by trains from Bendigo (though these don’t actually stop at Sunshine station). From ... [More]
If you’re boarding the Sydney Metro (I’ll mostly use the line number M1 for short) for the first time from a CBD station, the first thing you see is the grand architecture. Itโs impressive, but you also get a sense that they have designed it for scale to carry large numbers of people through the ... [More]
Good to see pledges for this long-neglected part of Melbourne
40 minute train frequencies – 1978-2026
Let me take a pause blogging my recent Sydney trip for this: Proper PDF timetables for Melbourne’s trains are around, but quite hard to find. Update: see bottom of post. The standard on-demand generated PDFs found on the Transport Victoria web site are customised to the specific date you ask for (and take into account ... [More]
Lots of pics of Melbourne’s newest tram
This video on the PTUA feed yesterday was mostly compiled from stuff I filmed in Barcelona last year: It is obviously not intended to be a direct comparison between Barcelona and Melbourne. They’re different cities, though Melbourne and Barcelona have very similar metropolitan populations (5.44m vs 5.79m). Barcelona is a bit less than half the ... [More]
The next stages of Tap And Go rollout have arrived. Announced yesterday: You can expect to see some Myki card readers switched and displaying Mastercard and Visa logos before that; I’m told it’ll happen in several phases. Apparently the dispersed nature of all the different bus depots is part of the challenge. But once done, ... [More]
V/Line was a mess this week thanks to using an ARTC system that relies on Telstra mobile, which had a major outage on Wednesday. Plus apparently the backup satellite connection didn’t work because the on-train equipment thought the mobile connection was fine. It raised an interesting question: how many people are affected by a major ... [More]
Here’s a quick comparison: Victoria has half price fares until the end of 2026. So how does Melbourne now compare to other capital cities? It’s a bit complicated. These are current adult fares for short to medium distance trips: I would expect that most people pay the top of the price range shown. The ranges ... [More]
Well, here we go, the Tap And Go (aka Contactless) trial has gone well, and from tomorrow Sunday 7th June it’s available on about half the train network: all the lines through North Melbourne, South Yarra, the Metro Tunnel and V/Line (at stations currently using Myki). The rest of the Metro network will be switched ... [More]
Which offence categories are increasing?
Melbourne’s no longer on top
Some thoughts on PSDs. They’re not simple to retro-fit, but would be a good goal to move towards.
It was a budget day last week. I havenโt had a chance to write a blog post so I thought Iโd try this: I’ll do a quick video. Hmm yeah okay it turned out to be 7 minutes long. Not as quick as I thought. If you prefer to read, no problem. The rest of ... [More]