The walk to the station is doing you good
Seems some people can’t see the trees for the forest.
A HIGH school has banned bicycles because it has no bike shed and it doesn’t want to encourage students who refuse to wear helmets.
Hume Central Secondary College’s policy has puzzled health and cycling groups amid growing concern about childhood obesity.
…
In the same newsletter, she [Principal Bronwyn Meek] complained about the dangerous congestion caused by too many cars around afternoon pick-up time.– Herald Sun: Hume Central Secondary College bans bikes
Meanwhile, a study by BusVic concluded that users of public transport get an average five times more walking time per day than those who use private transport.
- Public transport (all users): 41 mins
- Public transport, no private transport: 47 mins
- Private transport (cars, taxis, motorcycles), but no public transport: 8 mins
- Overall Melbourne average: 15 mins
And they looked at which areas of Melbourne have the lowest average minutes per day walking and cycling. Hardly surprising that it’s the areas which have the poorest public transport, where people are dependent on their cars for most trips.
And people wonder why there’s an obesity crisis.
I may not always enjoy the walk to the station, but I know it’s good for me, and because it’s built into my daily routine, it always happens.
I’m just lucky I live in an area where I’ve got that choice.
Parking too close
You’re meant to park at least one metre away from other cars, I guess so they have a chance of getting out of their parking spot:
If parking bays are not marked, you must leave at least one metre between your vehicle and those in front and behind.
– VicRoads
But how does anybody get booked for breaking that rule? How would a parking inspector know who had done the wrong thing?
That’s my car on the left. Nobody else was there when I parked; I came back to find the other car behind me. There was plenty of space — a driveway if I recall correctly — in front. So it wasn’t a problem.
The new computer
Every 3-4 years I’ll buy a new computer. Here’s the latest, a reconditioned (with warranty) HP Pavilion a6760a, to be called “Haddock”.
For the record (because often years later I come back and compare what I got for how much) the specs are: Intel Core 2 Duo E7400, 2Gb RAM, 500 Gb hard disk, NVidia GeForce 9300 GE (256 Mb video memory), DVB TV tuner, and a bunch of other stuff. All up $750 from GraysOnline ($609 plus some strange 15% fee called a buyer’s premium, plus delivery, but at least you know all that up-front).
Unfortunately it came with Windows Vista, so I’m taking the opportunity to upgrade it and the older computer (”Tintin”, which got an upgrade last year) I’m keeping for desktop use to Windows 7. The new one will do the games and video stuff, the old one I’ll chop back to basics: email and web and stuff.
Now I just have to work out what to do with “Snowy”. (Perhaps it’s time for it to upgrade the server, “Nestor”.)
Almost sci-fi pictures
There was a bloke on the train covering his eyes. A picture of him could be captioned: Don’t blink!
But it would be wrong to publish such a photo without his permission.
Instead I give you this, found in a street in Footscray. Let’s hope it’s bigger on the inside.
And it was nice to see this in Dudley Street, West Melbourne.
The storm
It just took almost two and a half hours to drive from Glen Huntly to Footscray. Here’s why.
Glen Huntly. The hail was bouncing off the cars.
…and the gutters quickly flooded…
…but that was nothing to Caulfield North…
…and St Kilda Road.
Kingsway wasn’t pretty — much under water, traffic lights out, and lots of traffic.
This street between Kingsway and Sturt Street/Eastern Road had a couple of cars which will have water damage.
All was quiet at this SES building in Sturt Street. Perhaps they were all out on calls. Note the hail stacked up by the building.
(Thanks to Marita for taking some of these.)
Update 9pm: Show pictures individually.
Diversity of culture
In the history of recorded music, given the choice, there are few tunes I would be less inclined to listen to than “Careless Whisper” (perhaps better known by the lyric “Never gonna dance again”) by George Michael.
Yet a lady on the train on Wednesday morning was listening to it on her iPod. All the sappy saxophone, every moaning lyric, loudly enough for me to hear it nearby — and for it to subsequently burrow its way into my brain.
Perhaps she had been prepping herself for Wednesday night’s concert.
One could take the piss out of her for having such a taste in music, but perhaps it just underscores the diversity of culture in the human race.
It reminds me of the time I was at the station reading Brian Bagnall’s “On The Edge: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of Commodore”. I was utterly rivetted to it — it’s excellent (though sloppily written) for geeks who had a Commodore computer back in the day.
The station host lady asked me what it was, and upon telling her, paused, and then remarked “We really are all different, aren’t we.”
Yep.
Meanwhile, I’m off to place something off my Loud list. Some Spiderbait might get rid of Mr Michael.
Doubling patronage (without peak hour pain)
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 important points to make here:
Not peak
It does not mean piling double the number of people into trains at peak hour, going into the CBD.
Travel into the CBD at peak hour is already dominated by public transport. It’s just the last hold-out rev-heads who fight their way through traffic to their employer-paid $16+ per day parking spots, as well as those whose lack of access to decent PT dictates that they drive. (They might change their minds if they get a train to Doncaster, for instance.)
(Source: Central City Users Survey 2008, page 62, weekday figures)
Peak hour is all about 9-5 workers and students. Melbourne City Council estimates show by 2020 these segments will grow from 431,000 per day to 520,000 — about 20% growth. (That’s entire City of Melbourne, not just the CBD.)
About half of all people come in by train now, so if every single one of those extra people was also coming by train in peak hour (unlikely), that’s at most a 40% increase in peak train passenger numbers — a long way from the 100% growth Metro is aiming for.
Other groups such as visitors will increase too, but they are less likely to be travelling in peak hour.
By far the biggest potential growth market (and Lezala realises this) is in off-peak travel: daytime, weekend, evening, and to destinations other than the city centre. Plenty of people are moving around Melbourne outside peak times, but because train (and other PT) services are pretty poor, most of them are moving by road — in fact some roads are now clogged seven days-a-week.
It’s all about providing more frequent services right across the week, which not only grows patronage at a time when there are heaps of spare trains and spare track capacity, it also helps spread the peak load.
And of course you also need frequent supporting bus/tram feeder services so people can get to the trains all day, given the car parks fill up by 8am, and so many people live beyond walking distance to stations, or are going to places not served by trains.
Timetabling in the peak
Secondly, he made the point that the timetables need a shake-up. One of the reasons peak hour trains are so packed (and conversely some have plenty of space) is we’re running a mid-90s train timetable with lots of bolt-ons added over the years. The extra services added have been slotted in wherever they could fit, and so the stopping patterns are all over the place, and the frequencies are uneven on many lines.
Take for example the times of AM peak hour trains leaving Carnegie, one of the busiest suburban stations on the Dandenong line:
…7:06, 7:10, 7:26, 7:30, 7:40, 7:43, 7:47, 7:57, 8:05, 8:11, 8:22, 8:27, 8:30…
They have different origin points, and serve different stations before getting to Carnegie, but in many cases they trail each other through the same stations.
I confess I haven’t checked these myself, but I’d lay odds that the 7:10 may be close to empty while the 7:26 will be packed, and the 7:40 is going to be much more crowded than the 7:47.
So you can see what he’s getting at when Lezala says the timetables need simplifying, with more regular stopping patterns and frequencies.
Expresses
And yes, I suspect some zone 1 stations will lose their odd occasional express services: at my station Bentleigh I’m betting the 8:06 and 8:17 Bent-Caul-S.Yarra expresses may well disappear.
But if it means more services overall, with more even frequencies (none of the 16 minute gaps you sometimes see now), I think that more than makes up for it.
Quick reviews
A few quick reviews of things I’ve read or watched recently…
(The DVDs fall into the category of “I’ve been meaning to watch that; I’ll buy that if it’s less than $10. Ooh, there it is!” One book was borrowed, the other I got for Christmas.)
A Hard Day’s Night — got this cheap on Amazon, and thought the kids would enjoy it, which they did. Occasionally the accents are a tad hard to follow, but the antics of the Beatles, together with Paul’s “very clean” grandfather got some laughs. And because it’s based loosely on the real life experiences of The Beatles, it’s also a view into life in 1960s Britain.
Tron — found this cheap in JB Hifi. It smells a bit of 80s computer-age wonder cash-in, with users having real beings inside the computer who run all their jobs. But it was quite enjoyable, and very interesting graphics for a 1982 film.
A Nest of Occasionals, Tony Martin — very funny stuff, particularly the tales of writing radio adverts, which had me in stitches at one point. I’m going to have to check out his other book, Lolly Scramble.
Jasper Jones (by Craig Silvey)– Superb, a real page turner, really enjoyed it. And again, fully intending to get hold of his other novel, Rhubarb.
(Currently reading Shane Maloney: “Stiff”.)
