It’s time for one of my regular posts of photos from ten years ago. Here’s September 2011. Southern Cross Station – exciting new retailers to slow down your path to the trains, coming soon! To be fair, these were mostly not placed in the way. You can find a million and one photos of Hitachi ... [More]
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Moonee Ponds high-rise
For urban renewal on this scale to work, public transport services need to be a lot better.
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Shakin’ all over
I had the washing machine going, so at 9:15am when I suddenly felt the house shaking, I thought it was the spin cycle going a bit crazy. But no… it was the first really big earthquake I’ve ever experienced – magnitude 5.9. I’ve felt tremors before, but this was longer and stronger by far. No ... [More]
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18 months in
With spring now upon us, we’re now almost 18 months into this. Last month I had another birthday in lockdown. A nice dinner and a video call with family made up for it. I don’t enjoy being in lockdown, but it seems to be the least bad way to keep the virus under control while ... [More]
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New signage, and other bus news
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]
Not many blog posts recently – too busy. So here are some ten year old photos… from August 2011. Queues to exit Flagstaff station. This was an increasing problem as the number of gates was insufficient. Marcus Wong also tracked this issue, and The Age covered the story the following year, and eventually all the ... [More]
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Marchetti’s constant
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]
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PT cuts after 1am during curfew
Night Network cuts, the appalling comms, and the impact
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Green and red and yellow
The recent IPCC report is a reminder that we should all be doing what we can to minimise our environmental impact. Rather than big picture, right now I wanted to focus on rubbish going to landfill. I think it’s good that my local council, Glen Eira, have modified their rubbish collection. Since late July, the ... [More]
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More crossings to go
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]
I’m a few days late with this, but here are some more old photos from ten years ago: July 2011. Halfway through installing Myki barriers at Southern Cross Station for the V/Line platforms. Also at Southern Cross, in the Myki centre (now the PTV Hub), was this interesting sight. It’s just a Myki Machine isn’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]