We’re now two years into the pandemic. For many Melbourne people, the start was marked by the sudden cancellation of the March 2020 Formula 1 Grand Prix, followed just over a week later by the early start of school holidays and the shift to Work From Home for most white-collar workers – which for many ... [More]
Not a transport post. In years gone by, I scoffed at the idea of paying $50+ a month for Foxtel pay TV, and I wasn’t the only one – apparently by 2012, only 28% of Australian homes had a pay TV subscription. I suppose Foxtel needed to cover their delivery infrastructure costs, unlike today’s streaming ... [More]
I’ve written before that Victoria (and Melbourne) was the only major jurisdiction in the country not publishing patronage data more regularly than once a year. Well, kudos to the Department of Transport: just recently they started publishing monthly patronage data, alongside updated annual station entry data for Metro and V/Line. (I know Philip Mallis had ... [More]
Sometimes my walks take me to interesting places. On Saturday while walking in South Kensington, I found myself at the site of the Metro Tunnel’s western portal. To my surprise, there was nobody around, no signage saying to stay out, and no closed gate. So I peeked around the corner to snap some photos of ... [More]
More photos from ten years ago – this time from February 2012 The Metcard to Myki transition was well underway, and Metcard machines were increasingly being removed and replaced. Some Myki card vending machines however were still not vending cards. This Metcard machine at Flinders Street was presumably in the process of removal. Note the ... [More]
Good information is vital on public transport, but so often it’s incomplete or incorrect
There’s a good map doing the rounds showing the sections of the Sydney Trains network that run every 10 minutes on weekdays off-peak. Bambul has expanded this into a blog post, which also includes another map of 15 minute frequencies. A couple of people asked if there was a Melbourne version of the 10 minute ... [More]
Between Richmond and Ringwood there are a staggering 13 stopping patterns within a 6 hour period each weekday.
Here’s another in my series of photos from ten years ago: January 2012. Between Southern Cross and North Melbourne, the Regional Rail Link was taking shape. This new bridge on the western side of the tracks was adding capacity to feed into new SoCross platforms 15 and 16. Apologies for the slightly dodgy photo snapped ... [More]
Obviously, travel demand in cities is in turmoil just at the moment, but leaving the 2020-2022 blip aside for a minute, and looking again at pre-COVID travel in cities… As a follow-up to comparing Melbourne’s public transport patronage to Sydney’s, I thought I’d look at all the big capital cities. The five biggest are also ... [More]
I hope everyone’s doing okay. The widespread view is that government mismanagement has made this latest outbreak far worse than it needs to be. They don’t want more lockdowns – perhaps fair enough given high rates of vaccination – but they’re not ensuring the testing (PCR and Rapid Antigen Test) capacity can properly handle it. ... [More]
I’ve been on a long term course to reduce my household emissions, so this little list caught my eye: One by one on these (in a slightly different order): LED lighting – yes – I think all the CfLs have been replaced by LEDs. LEDs to me seem to be living up to expectations of ... [More]