You might recall I had put in a request to Vicroads to resolve a 13 year old problem with a local bus zone. The bus zone hours hadn’t been updated since last decade. In 2006 the operating hours of bus route 701 were extended so it runs until after 9pm in the evening, and Sunday ... [More]
Sorry PT fans, this is a blog about driving. I’ve had the new car, a 2017 Mitsubishi Lancer bought brand new, a year now, and have got to just on 10,000 kilometres so far. The average in Australia is about 15,000 km per year, but some drive a lot further. My past average is about ... [More]
Another in my series of photos from ten years ago. This month: July 2009. Then-metropolitan train operator Connex was advertising the addition of more station staff around the network. Frankston station. I think the construction was an upgrade to the bus interchange… which was all replaced again in 2018. Mordialloc station (I think) Richmond station, ... [More]
You always spot more stuff on foot than you would when driving. On Saturday morning I walked over to the new 627 bus route and caught it up to Murrumbeena, before walking home via Carnegie, my old neighbourhood. The bus wasn’t packed, but a few people were using it, including some boarding and alighting at ... [More]
The new trains are expected to go into service later this year, 100 years after Melbourne’s first electric trains started running. Their official name is the not-very-catchy High Capacity Metro Trains, or HCMTs for short. A friend’s son suggested what I think is a far better name, given the anniversary: Centennial Trains. What do you ... [More]
No time at the moment for any ambitious deep dive blog posts, so here’s a slightly rambling follow-up to last week’s Caulfield to City rail bustitution. For the entire week, I was lucky enough to avoid travelling in peak hours, but overall the feedback was that it was a lot smoother this time. There were ... [More]
I’ve been listening to the Transit Unplugged podcast for a while now on my (sometimes quite long) weekend walks. They typically interview CEOs and other senior managers from public transport systems in the USA, often small-to-medium sized operations. In recent weeks they’ve published a set of interviews with CEOs from much larger operations – and ... [More]
Just a quick one as I’ve been very busy, and have also had a bad cold, so haven’t felt like much writing. The next lot of major bustitution is upon us from Saturday morning, and including all of next week: no trains between the City and Caulfield. You’ll recall that at Easter, this was a ... [More]
Here (just a few hours late) is another in my series of ten year old photos: this time, it’s June 2009. Already the subject of a blog post, was this confusing ad on the side of a bus. Does it mean it’s flexible or not? Don’t you wish you were not packed into a train ... [More]
Last week’s two whirlwind trips to Brisbane were busy with family business, but there was a chance for a few quick transporty observations. Tourists see signs for “stations” and might assume they’re all railway stations. Nope, some of them are busway stations – they just look similar from the outside! Boggo Road busway station has ... [More]
In the past week, I’ve flown to Brisbane and back twice. My Uncle Frank got very sick. My sister, my cousin and I are his closest relatives, and we all live interstate. Thankfully we were able to go and see him. He passed away on Sunday morning. It was peaceful in the end, but it ... [More]
A follow-up to last week’s post mapping out the number of train services per station. Commenter Andrew suggested I compare it against patronage – happily I’d been working on this anyway! Here it is – and as a bonus I’ve got hold of 2017-18 station patronage data. The darker the blue, the higher the boardings ... [More]