You’re going to have to trust me on this because it doesn’t show up well in the picture, but this train seen this morning said “ROME” on the back, instead of “METRO”. Evidently someone had been re-arranging some of the letters By some freak occurrence, last week I found myself travelling on the Upfield line ... [More]
With public transport free today, it looks like some are taking advantage — there seemed to be more Seniors on the train this morning, enjoying a free trip into the city (even though it’s only $3.40 normally). But overall the train wasn’t markedly more crowded than usual, and it’s not like everyone abandoned their cars ... [More]
Every time your train is stuck inexplicably in a tunnel, every time a service is cancelled, the experience is not just eroding your quality of life. It is eating away at our city’s global competitiveness. — Boris Johnson, Mayor of London in the London Evening Standard, 15/10/2009 A power problem at Southern Cross Station has ... [More]
This picture has not been digitally altered. Maybe they got halfway through putting the stickers on the front, then realised the train was needed to run a service. In other news, while Metro got their June performance figures out almost two weeks ago, and Yarra Trams and V/Line have also published theirs, the Department of ... [More]
Blog: Nice ad placement; was that Part Of The Plan? And what’s the effect of the new timetables?
Metro must have been buying a lot of grey paint. All of the graffiti on the retaining wall opposite platform one at Bentleigh has been painted over, as have the sides of the platforms. There’s been a similar frenzy of painting grey on the walls in the cuttings around South Yarra. I wonder if people ... [More]
Melbourne’s Comeng trains date back to the early 1980s, about the same time us Gen-Xers were cutting our video game teeth with Donkey Kong and Space Invaders. (Original unmodified pic) There’s certainly other things of the 80s around the place on the train network, for instance this sign on a now unused gate at Caulfield ... [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]
The new timetables started yesterday, but this morning is the first big test of the peak hour changes. As I’ve already noted, while most lines get a tweak, the Caulfield lines get a big shake-up, especially Frankston. As the number of trains running has increased, more have had to bypass the four CBD loop tunnels. ... [More]
So, a new train timetable starts in June, shaking up the Frankston line in particular, but also the Dandenong line and minor tweaks on some of the other lines. Updated 10pm with a pic of a Comeng train in the new Metro colours About a year ago I remarked that the Frankston line was using ... [More]
The Age: Melbourne trains fail world ‘metro’ test Based on this study: PTUA: Melbourne Metro by name, but not by nature, which looks at the biggest thirty cities in the developed world by population, and which of them have a metro — that is, a high capacity, high frequency (every 10 minutes all day, every ... [More]
Metro Trains boss Andrew Lezala remarked on Tuesday at the Parliamentary Select Committee on Train Services that he hoped to see rail patronage double by 2020. “Our overall plan is to double patronage on the railway during the life of the franchise, which requires a major increase in the system’s capacity.” I think there’s two ... [More]