Back in the Mother Country, they just opened the new rail line across central London. Known as Crossrail during construction, it’s officially now called the Elizabeth Line. In an article in the Australian Financial Review, Crossrail CEO (and former PTV CEO) Mark Wild compared Crossrail with two of the biggest Australian rail projects: the Melbourne ... [More]
On Friday, The Age reported that Infrastructure Australia has put out a report that asks what sort of city we’d like to have in 2046: The Expanded Low Density scenario – similar to Los Angeles – sprawling, dispersed suburbs, even more car-dominated than today The Centralised High Density scenario – similar to New York City ... [More]
Backdated. Posted 29/10/2017. Before we headed back to Australia, one more day in London to explore… at least for most of us. Three of us were catching an evening flight, but M had to head back 12 hours earlier, departing on a morning flight. I walked her to the station and helped her (and her ... [More]
(Backdated. Posted 21/10/2017) Our second last day in London. While the others had breakfast, I ducked out of the flat to try and find a post office, as I’d neglected to give one of my relatives a souvineer from Australia, and thought it best to mail it while we were still in England. The nearest ... [More]
(Backdated. Posted 1/10/2017) Our mission today was to get locked up in the Tower Of London. Oh, sorry, I mean to see the Tower Of London. We headed on the Tube to the Tower. Tickets booked in advance the night before meant we could bypass at least one of the queues, but it was still ... [More]
(Backdated. Posted 29/9/2017) Good morning! It was garbage day in our street in Chiswick. As usual, you notice the little things that are different from home. In the London Borough of Hounslow, the garbos (what’s the local term? Not sure) don’t have an arm on the truck that grabs the bins; they have to manually ... [More]
Backdated. Posted 21/9/2017 Time to head back to London for the last few days of our holiday. We packed up our stuff and left the Air BNB flat. A word about the flat. It had been chosen for its location (walking distance to Brussels Midi/Zuid station), which along with the price, which were its best ... [More]
Very busy the last few weeks, which is why the blog has been so quiet. Long-time readers would know that I like to write about my interstate and overseas holidays in almost excruciating detail. Well brace yourself for another one – I’ve got a European holiday in planning for later this year. It’s looking like ... [More]
In this blog post I hope to address a few myths around Melbourne’s rail system that I’m seeing floating around. The Loop tunnels have hardly any trains! I’ve heard from a couple of sources in the past week (one on mainstream radio) the claim that nothing needs to be done about rail capacity in the ... [More]
15 years ago I got back from my first trip to Europe. Here, finally, are the video highlights. Daniel’s 1998 Europe trip highlights from Daniel Bowen on Vimeo. Includes England (south-east, London, and York), Scotland (Edinburgh, Inverness, Plockton), Brussels, Bruges, Amsterdam. Worth noting… The blog posts written at the time are available here: Europe 1998. ... [More]
Terrible scenes in England. What started peacefully seems to have descended into pure opportunism from troublemakers. Did anybody see it coming? Well check this fascinating article from The Guardian, a week ago: Farewell youth clubs, hello street life â and gang warfare With budget cuts leading to the loss of facilities that kept many inner-city ... [More]
I did a double-take last night when a Cranbourne train was announced as running “express from Dandenong to Merinda Park”, not just on the automatic announcement, but also on the screen. There is no station between Dandenong and Merinda Park. There eventually will be, at Lynbrook, but construction hasn’t even begun yet. In fact tenders ... [More]