All forms of transport, including gunzelly
This was a truly magic moment during a walk on Sunday. What starts as a slow tram death march takes an unexpected twist. This is nothing without the audio, so make sure you have your sound turned on. Not the best moment for public transport, but truly a great one for active transport.
For urban renewal on this scale to work, public transport services need to be a lot better.
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]
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]
Night Network cuts, the appalling comms, and the impact
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]
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]