I love a bit of local history, even if it’s fairly recent. For my fellow Bentleigh peeps — as part of the level crossing removal project, the old underpass into the station has been partially uncovered. It looks to have been a similar layout to Mckinnon: steps straight to the street, as well as a ... [More]
I’ve touched on this before, but I keep seeing comments about it, so I think it’s worthy of a blog post of its own. Some say that motorists are the primary beneficiaries of grade separation, and that they should be classed as road projects. Certainly motorists gain, but so do others. Here are seven benefits ... [More]
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The week in transport
Consider this an experiment… a post each weekend summing up a few things from the week. Tuesday 2015-12-08 — Flagstaff station to open on weekends from January. The Victorian Government finally confirmed what we already knew. Not before time. Tuesday 2015-12-08 — Ventura Buses has its Christmas bus out and about again, and a competition ... [More]
One of the things they got right about Myki was designing it to be “open architecture”. This of course came at a cost compared with simply buying an off-the-shelf system, but it does mean that it’s modular — different bits can be improved and upgraded over time without replacing the whole system at enormous cost. ... [More]
Each time I travel (which isn’t often enough), I note the things that are different, and the things we can learn from. From my most recent short trip to Sydney, here are some notes — not an exhaustive study, but just some observations. Central Station is a rabbit warren compared to Flinders Street Station, though ... [More]
Back in the day I watched the 1998 movie Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, and liked it. Then I watched the 2001 TV spin-off Lock Stock which was okay I guess (it was notable for having Martin Freeman in a couple of episodes, in one of his early roles). But what really grabbed me ... [More]
I’ve written before in passing about the freight train from Hastings that heads up from Frankston at about 5pm each weekday, clogging up every crossing along the line, until the pinnacle: it crawls across Glen Huntly Road at about 5:45pm, right in the middle of rush hour. As you can see from this video (shot ... [More]
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Transport podcasts
I’ve stopped listening to music while I run, and instead am listening to podcasts, particularly transport-related podcasts, ‘cos obviously that’s a particular interest. And I’m trying to only listen to them while I run, as an incentive to keep running. Here are some I’ve listened to recently: The Conversation: Politics Podcast Jamie Briggs on the ... [More]
Posted 27/11/2015. Back-dated. The third and final day of my obsessively-blogged short trip to Sydney, and it was destined to be pretty geeky. After breakfast and checking out, we caught a train to Penshurst (changing at Wolli Creek, which I assume is a pretty new interchange station), then a walk in the sun to The ... [More]
Sunday! And so we get to the main excuse reason for the trip to Sydney on this specific weekend: the Doctor Who Festival. I’ve been to Comic-Con in Melbourne twice, but this was a different beast: 98% dedicated to Doctor Who, with little bit of Sherlock (which has many of the same producers/writers/crew members/fans!) getting ... [More]
(Back-dated. Posted 24/11/2015.) Booking hotels When I book hotels, I treat location as the highest priority. I’m aiming to make it easy to get around the city we’re going to without a car. For this trip, I was aiming for easy access to: Hordern Pavilion, Sydney CBD, and the airport. Anything else was a bonus. ... [More]
It’s important to have a long-term plan. PTV has one for rail which is published here: PTV Network Development Plan – Metropolitan Rail — I’ve blogged about this plan when it was released. Upgrades such as the Melbourne Metro Rail Tunnel and the new fleet of trains tie into this plan, and complement each other: ... [More]