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]
For those of us back in lockdown, hope you’re doing okay. Let me tell you about the best thing this past week. (No transport content here; if that’s what you’re after, you can skip this post.) In 1928, Gurney Slade wrote Lovers And Luggers, a novel set in Broome amongst pearl divers. The movie rights ... [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
For two nights last month I was in northern Victoria, at the in-laws’ farm, standing around in the dark with my camera and my friend Gary, learning from him how to photograph the night sky. It was bloody cold. But there’s little or no light pollution up there, and despite some cloud around, mostly the ... [More]
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]
Last year I wrote a blog pondering why Sydney’s rail patronage is 50% higher than Melbourne’s. This has got a fresh airing amid speculation that Melbourne’s COVID-19 spread is linked to greater urban mobility in Melbourne compared to Sydney. I thought I’d quickly look at public transport patronage specifically. Here it is summed up in ... [More]
In my series of photos from ten years ago I missed May, so here’s a combined post for May and June 2011. Balaclava station, the 1981 pebblemix version (which followed a fire, if I recall correctly), before it was demolished and replaced in 2014. The old McKinnon station – with just one Myki reader at ... [More]
In our last exciting chapter, back in March, COVID-19 had settled down in Victoria, and largely disappeared. Life pretty much returned back to normal except overseas travel was near-impossible, and you had to wear a mask on PT. It couldn’t last. Another outbreak is now upon us in Melbourne. My view: no matter where you ... [More]
The State Budget was last Thursday, and I went along to the stakeholder lockup to peruse the Budget Papers and quiz the government officials. From a public transport perspective thereโs not the huge amount of new spending we’ve seen in some years. See the PTUA view here, but some of the notable items include: $985.8m ... [More]