A piece of personal geek history: yesterday I had heard that a system I worked on when just out of uni in 1993 just finally got decommissioned. Myself and my mate Brian got out of uni at the end of ’92, and looked for IT jobs. In early 1993 I landed a contract at a ... [More]
The Victorian Government is pushing ahead with reform in emergency and disaster management. I can’t say I know a lot about it, but one reform that I’ve long thought they should consider is a re-drawing of the Metropolitan Fire Brigade/Country Fire Authority boundaries. They simply don’t make sense. The CFA covers large areas of outer-suburban ... [More]
For the second time in a week, I’ve watched as tonight’s 6:31pm route 703 bus pulls out just as the train (due at 6:30pm) departs Bentleigh station and a crowd of people off the train approaches the stop. Now, I accept that buses should run to time. And the operator contract probably penalises late-running (bearing ... [More]
The Federal government’s High Speed Rail study assumes a route from Melbourne via Canberra to Sydney of between 823 and 842 km (mostly following existing highways), with trains reaching up to 350 km/h, and a three hour trip time from Melbourne to Sydney. Some people who argue against the idea like to claim there is ... [More]
In the city tonight…
The Herald Sun paywall launched in March, and offered free 2-month passes. Any word on what’s happened now those have run out? Strange dream: Woke up with the most enormous sideburns. Struggled to get them removed before having to go to work. Another dream: Was invited to a very elaborate dinner party at Alan Kohler’s ... [More]
This seems to cause endless confusion: A figure of 798 (or 133 per carriage) is often incorrectly implied to be the capacity of a Melbourne train. According to Victorian government standards, a six-carriage train is considered “full” if more than 798 passengers are aboard. — Age 17/5/2011: Peak-hour trains still a horror trip But 798 ... [More]
My best guess is that PT fares are expected to jump by about 7% on January 1st. They generally go up by CPI (which the ABS says was 2.0% in the year to the end of September) but as part of a two year plan originally hatched by the ALP and followed by the Coalition, ... [More]
You can tell I don’t have a good blog post ready to go when I post a bunch of pictures. Here’s a few from last week (that you may have seen if you follow me on Twitter). Mer Chri! — This was on Thursday night — by Friday they’d put up the other letters. Below ... [More]
From December 29th, a month from today, basically all metropolitan public transport will require a Myki card, following the government decision in June 2011 to not implement short term tickets. I expect regular users will adapt. Most of them already have. It’s the occasional users (and that includes locals as well as tourists) who will ... [More]
Southland station makes sense. The rail line runs adjacent to the west side of the centre. It’s the kind of destination midway along the line which can boost patronage (eg get people out of cars) without putting pressure on peak hour services. “But…” FAQs It’s too close to Highett/Cheltenham! — no, it’d be about 1.2km ... [More]
Update: Since 2016, Myki top-ups have been sped-up, and are now done within about 90 minutes. This is a question that seems to come up continually, and from what I hear, the Myki Call Centre aren’t covering themselves in glory in trying to explain it: Why does Myki online topup take 24 hours or more? ... [More]