All forms of transport, including gunzelly
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]
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]
Some thoughts on the new station design
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]
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]
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]
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]
I am fascinated with the ongoing saga of the Ballarat crossing gates. At about 11:35pm on 30th May last year, a V/Line train from Melbourne that was meant to stop at Ballarat station instead sped through the platforms and crashed through the Lydiard Street crossing gates. The train eventually stopped about 600 metres beyond the ... [More]