Many European countries put serious resources into their public transport systems and have networks that are the envy of the world, but don’t necessarily assume they are better than us in every single respect. For instance, one might assume that German trains are never late — or at least that their punctuality is light years ... [More]
Heading south along William Street in morning peak hour, fighting for space on the street, are pedestrians (predominantly coming out of Flagstaff station), trams, cyclists and motorists. How many of each? Tram route 55 gets a tram about every 4 minutes in peak hour. The May 2012 PTV load survey said that each tram carries ... [More]
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Pictures from Violet Town
It was 44 years last week since the 1969 crash of the Southern Aurora into a goods train at Violet Town in northeast Victoria. (Upgrades to safety systems should ensure such a crash doesn’t happen again.) The CFA has published a set of photos and a fascinating article about the disaster — well worth a ... [More]
It’s interesting to see that around the CBD, a subtle line is often marked on the pavement, where (I’m assuming) the publicly-owned pavement ends and the privately-owned property begins. Quite a few buildings include this kind of open space, particularly at the front, and I would assume the boundary would have legal significance. In some ... [More]
I was trying to get some photos and/or video for a blog post I’m writing. I’m having trouble finding a source for part of the post, so in the meantime here’s a snippet of video from the pedestrian overpass above the Nepean Highway at Moorabbin. I might be wrong, but it does appear to me ... [More]
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On the trams
Live — from a tram stop in the Bourke Street Mall The latest in high-contrast, high-resolution semi-permanent destination displays While it looks like it’s good from a tram operations point of view, it’s also not hard to see why people such as Paul Mees see the Melbourne University tram terminus/shunting yard as poor urban design, ... [More]
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Bye bye home phone, hello VOIP
I finally got around to replacing my home fixed line phone with VOIP. I took the easy route of sticking with my ISP, Netspace/iiNet. Previously each month I’d been paying $59.95 for ADSL2+ broadband, plus for the home phone $22.95 rental, plus $6 for caller ID, plus $2.93 for an unlisted number. Local calls were ... [More]
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Special licence plates
The Wikipedia article on Australian licence plates highlights some special prefixes, but here’s a list I’ve tried to come up with that includes others they don’t show, from personal observations and gleaning information from the VicRoads web site. Some of them are clearly abbreviations for what they are… some not so much. AO (suffix) – ... [More]
Prior to the 1990s, suburban trains had two staff members: a driver and a guard. The purpose of the driver is obvious. The guard… less so. The primary role of the guard was similar to those still used on trains in Brisbane and Sydney: verify the train was safe to depart, and in the case ... [More]
If you improve a product, and want it to sell well, you need to make people aware of it. When they launched trains every 10 minutes between the City and Ringwood, Dandenong and Frankston last year on weekends, there was an initial bit of publicity via the media, but very little else. Metro did some ... [More]
Another Myki stuff-up has been found. Myki cards have a four year lifespan. With many cards bought in Geelong in late-2008 and early-2009 now expiring, a number of users are getting replacement cards. Some are going back to the original retail outlets, post offices in Geelong and Corio, and buying new cards (the cost of ... [More]
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First school day
With most kids going back to school this week, Andrew was blogging about the first day of school. I don’t remember much about my first day either, though I do have a photo that I believe was snapped that morning: Long-haired hippy. It was the 70s though. And I was obviously in a good mood… ... [More]