Categories
transport

Glenhuntly crossing works underway

Works to remove the level crossings in my old neighbourhood of Glen Huntly are underway, including construction of a new Glenhuntly station. (The suburb is spelt as two words, the station as one. No, they’re not fixing the discrepancy, despite building an entirely new station. No, it doesn’t make sense.) A week’s closure of the  ... [More]

Categories
Going green transport

Electric buses are coming

On Saturday I had my first brief ride in an electric bus. The electric bus seemed much quieter than it’s diesel cousins. And no engine vibration while idling. And no fumes of course.Great to see more electric buses coming into service – hopefully with ongoing investment in route reform and more frequent services.🚌 pic.twitter.com/AsVFhGWdKI —  ... [More]

Categories
transport

Train services to activity centres and growth areas

Are train frequencies to Melbourne’s busiest places up to scratch?

Categories
transport

Night train to bus connections

With the very welcome revamp of the Night Bus network last year, I wondered how the train to bus connections are now that most bus routes are 24-hour versions of regular routes, rather than the previous arrangement of confusing special routes that virtually nobody used. Here’s a quick look at a couple of my local  ... [More]

Categories
books transport

Who killed East-West Link?

This new book on EWL is a political page-turner.

Categories
transport

Comparing Crossrail and the Metro tunnel

Back in the Mother Country, they just opened the new rail line across central London. Known as Crossrail during construction, it’s officially now called the Elizabeth Line. In an article in the Australian Financial Review, Crossrail CEO (and former PTV CEO) Mark Wild compared Crossrail with two of the biggest Australian rail projects: the Melbourne  ... [More]

Categories
transport

Comparing fares

Here’s a quick comparison of adult PT fares and discounts in Australian capital cities. Peak fare range(on card) Off-peak fare Fare cap weekdays Fare cap weekends Bulk discount Adelaide $3.95 $2.20 $11.00 daily fare (not an automatic cap) $11.00 14 days $63.2028 days $105.00 Brisbane $3.37 – $10.17 20% discount No cap No cap 8  ... [More]

Categories
transport

Footscray in the Middle

Some stations are shiny new – others have barely changed in a century.

Categories
transport

Are PT services keeping up with population?

The State Budget was last week, and included some good investments in public transport. I haven’t had time to write up everything (so busy!), but I thought I’d quickly show a couple of key indicators. Total public transport service kilometres (in blue; left axis) Public transport service kilometres per person (in red; right axis) Service  ... [More]

Categories
transport

Train punctuality around Australia

A remark on social media inspired this: a quick comparison of suburban train punctuality in Australia. We have suburban rail networks in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide, and all of them publish monthly punctuality data. So here’s a quick graph comparing them since January last year: Some caveats: Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide consider “on-time”  ... [More]

Categories
Photos from ten years ago transport

Old photos from April 2012

Another in my series of posts of ten year old photos, and this time they’re 100% public transport related. Around the network, Myki was slowly taking over, but some of the Metcard vending machines were still hanging on. One benefit of Myki was that it handled the weekend saver cap automatically. There was a Myki  ... [More]

Categories
Health transport

PT mask rules around Australia

The continuing use of masks on public transport came up last week when Premier Andrews remarked that they’d be around for some time yet. (For a segment on this topic on ABC Radio Melbourne last Thursday with me, listen here – it starts at roughly at 1:55:40.) So I thought I’d quickly review what the  ... [More]