Categories
transport

Train punctuality around Australia

A remark on social media inspired this: a quick comparison of suburban train punctuality in Australia. We have suburban rail networks in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide, and all of them publish monthly punctuality data. So here’s a quick graph comparing them since January last year: Some caveats: Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide consider “on-time”  ... [More]

Categories
transport

PT patronage in our biggest cities

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]

Categories
transport

My smartcard collection – I’ll report on Opal soon!

Here is my collection of Australian public transport smartcards. The ones I’m missing are Adelaide, Canberra and Tasmania — all of which have been introduced since my last visits there. Notably Perth’s SmartRider is the only card that is blank on the back, which is why the card number (which I’ve blacked-out) is on the  ... [More]

Categories
transport

#HighSpeedRail may not happen anytime soon, but it’s critical that the corridor be reserved

The Phase 2 Report from the High Speed Rail study was released last week — predicting that although HSR would cover its recurrent (running/maintenance) costs, it’d first take some $114 billion and 45 years to build it. As I’ve said before, I think a 3-ish hour trip from Melbourne to Sydney would be time-competitive with  ... [More]

Categories
transport

My dad and the Brisbane PT campaign, circa 1951

I was interested to see this post complaining about Brisbane bus services to the University of Queensland. In this Courier Mail article it appears that the most overcrowded bus services in Brisbane all serve university precincts. My dad was editor of the UQ student newspaper Semper Floreat in 1951. UQ has recently put many (possibly  ... [More]

Categories
Brisbane 2011 transport

Buses, trains, and bus ways

Today’s Movember update here (I’ll post the latest pics to the blog every 2-3 days.) A lot of people express a preference of trains over buses. I suspect it’s mostly about ride quality. Railed vehicles are generally going to be smoother than tyred vehicles. And there’s also perception of permanence (and in Melbourne, perception of  ... [More]

Categories
Brisbane 2011

Brisbane day 6 – heading home

Thursday 6th October Alas, the day came to depart Brisbane and head back home. Perhaps it’s inevitable these days that travelling interstate pretty much requires setting aside most or all of the day just for the journey. I suppose it’s a consequence of modern air travel, which requires getting to and from airports, and lengthy  ... [More]

Categories
Brisbane 2011

Brisbane day 5 – Surfers Paradise

Wednesday 5th October The first job was to return the hire car. Similar to the circuitous route filling it up the night before, due to the one way streets, this involved a 750 metre drive (Google Maps estimated time: 4 minutes), and then a 170 metre walk back (estimated: 2 minutes). Turning out of Raff  ... [More]