All forms of transport, including gunzelly
From time to time you’ll see someone having a whinge that they got on a tram and nobody bought a ticket or validated one, and therefore they must all be freeloaders. For example these comments on the Herald Sun web site: On every tram i board, only one person out of the 30 on there ... [More]
From time to time I’ll rant on Twitter about the FKN (Frankston — it’s an official code) line being stuffed. After a few months of pretty good performance right around the rail network, the past week has seen a marked decline. Pulling together info from Connex’s Twitter feed and SMS alerts, and excluding a medical ... [More]
It occured to me that a lot is going to change in public transport in the next few months. Connex is on the way out, to be replaced by MTM trading as Metro. Metcard will be phased out in favour of
The billion-dollar-plus Myki ticketing system is slowly moving forward. They’re expecting it to be switched on (at least in part) in Melbourne by the end of the year, followed by V/Line sometime next year. It already runs on regional town buses in Ballarat, Bendigo, Geelong, Seymour and the Latrobe Valley. Interestingly there are apparently no ... [More]
Secret tramways business The secret route numbers are getting worse on Collins Street. It looks like a 47 is a shortened 109, to Kew Depot, presumably via Victoria Street. A 29? Not sure, maybe a shortened 48. Does that mean it goes via Bridge Road? Not sure. And if the 29 and the 47 both ... [More]
The Example, by Tom Taylor and Colin Wilson (published by Gestalt Books), might be the first graphic novel to be set entirely within the confines of Flinders Street Station. It’s a short but thought-provoking read, combining a most-of-Western-world issue — paranoia over terrorism — with a more decidedly local Melbourne issue: the trains. Speaking of ... [More]
Free CBD PT? DUMB IDEA. That would benefit those who drive in, to the detriment of the rest of us.
While I realise the shutdown of the M1 eastbound on Tuesday was probably misery for those caught up in it, the lengthy article on it in yesterday’s Age I think vastly overstates the impact. The article basically has the road lobby saying that the whole thing doesn’t work (and the $1.4 billion of improvements won’t ... [More]
If you’ve wondered about the LEDs being increasingly used for traffic lights, apparently they use 60% less energy. They also last about ten times longer than conventional bulbs. I assume the design, which includes a whole bunch of individual LEDs, also allows for some redundancy, so some can fail but the entire light doesn’t stop ... [More]
Melbourne’s tram operator also set a target of catching more than 60,000 commuters over a nine-month period. — Herald Sun, 11/9/2009, “Tram inspectors pushed to meet their quotas“ See, after all these years, they’re still going about it the wrong way. I don’t think the deterrent of fines is really working. The measure of success ... [More]
Very cool. It’s like the Cadillac of bikes. Just the thing for a spin down to the beach.
Back to the future? New ticketing system with a distinctive new name and look to start… in late-1994!