For urban renewal on this scale to work, public transport services need to be a lot better.
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Moonee Ponds high-rise
Category: transport
All forms of transport, including gunzelly
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New signage, and other bus news
It’s only a little thing, but this has been spotted: the new design for bus stop signs. This seems to be a minor revision of signs first seen in 2018 – the PTV logo is back! Further down the pole, the timetable case and the information with the stop ID (including in Braille) remain – ... [More]
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Marchetti’s constant
The concept of a Travel Time Budget, also known as Marchetti’s constant, was mentioned in conversation last week, and it got me thinking. Marchetti posits that although forms of urban planning and transport may change, and although some live in villages and others in cities, people gradually adjust their lives to their conditions (including location ... [More]
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PT cuts after 1am during curfew
Night Network cuts, the appalling comms, and the impact
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More crossings to go
Last week the State Government announced another ten level crossings to be removed, on the Pakenham, Frankston, Mernda, Sunbury, Lilydale and Belgrave lines. This made sense in part because they want to keep the workforce busy once other projects are completed. Leave it too long and those skilled people will move elsewhere, and you can’t ... [More]
Last week, before lockdown started, I got to look around the Pakenham East train depot, courtesy of Evolution Rail – which is the company introducing the High Capacity Metro Trains onto the rail network. (My personal view is that HCMT is a terrible name for a train. Some people are calling them Evolution trains, and ... [More]
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New suburbs, poor service
You might assume that it’s only new outer suburbs where public transport services are half-baked. But it can also be the case in new inner suburbs. Edgewater is on the Maribyrnong River, opposite Flemington Racecourse, about 6km from the GPO. It’s former Commonwealth land which included the Footscray Ammunition Factory, and was developed over the ... [More]
It looks like SRL will be designed to run about every 5 minutes.
The Federal Auditor General released its report into the Commuter Car Parking Fund, and found it totally flawed, with the selection of sites done on the basis of politics, not merit. You can read the full ANAO report here, but I wanted to highlight the myriad of problems with the scheme. 1. The politics The ... [More]
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Glenhuntly station designs released
Some thoughts on the new station design
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Tumbling patronage
Just a quick post today. The State Budget Papers obviously give an overview of the state’s finances, and new funding initiatives. In Victoria, they also provide the only regular, consistent view of metrics for a range of government services, including public transport patronage. (In contrast, other states put this data out far more regularly.) Anyway, ... [More]
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Sydney vs Melbourne PT patronage
Last year I wrote a blog pondering why Sydney’s rail patronage is 50% higher than Melbourne’s. This has got a fresh airing amid speculation that Melbourne’s COVID-19 spread is linked to greater urban mobility in Melbourne compared to Sydney. I thought I’d quickly look at public transport patronage specifically. Here it is summed up in ... [More]
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State Budget 2021
The State Budget was last Thursday, and I went along to the stakeholder lockup to peruse the Budget Papers and quiz the government officials. From a public transport perspective thereâs not the huge amount of new spending we’ve seen in some years. See the PTUA view here, but some of the notable items include: $985.8m ... [More]
There’s been a bit of confusion about the rules around masks and public transport. I’m not here to speculate on whether the rules are needed. I’m not an epidemiologist and probably neither are you. While there’s been no COVID-19 community spread in Victoria for many weeks, the recent case of the gentleman who unwittingly caught ... [More]
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What ever happened to tram cams?
Yet again, the issue of motorists illegally overtaking trams has been highlighted – by Channel 9 on Tuesday, and the Herald Sun on Wednesday. This follows on from reports as recently as January of motorists hitting tram passengers while breaking road rule 163. Educating motorists has a role here. There have been education campaigns in ... [More]
Another in my series of photos from ten years ago: April 2011. Platforms 15 and 16 under construction at Southern Cross. The station is owned and run by Civic Nexus under a PPP. The platforms were to be used by V/Line. But the project to build them was done by Metro. Confusing? Perhaps, but at ... [More]