One of those frantic days.

E Day — the Eddington report came out. Age story. In summary: do we really want to blow $20 billion on tunnels, when one (the road tunnel) appears to serve no purpose (hardly anybody drives NE to W) and the other (the rail tunnel) tries to solve a capacity problem that shouldn’t exist if we run the infrastructure we’ve got properly?

Spending all that money means nothing left for the new rail lines we need to Doncaster, Rowville, Melton… And the report appears to include some major flaws which follow the old “predict and provide” road-supply formula: predict lots of traffic, then build the roads to make sure it happens. Never a good idea.

The crazy weather meant a thing at ABC radio that should have been just after 5pm got bumped to about 5:40. After that I headed home, and having just missed a tram, ended up getting a tad lost in Southbank walking to Flinders Street Station. It’s a pretty big building to lose, but in that area there seem to be zero signs directing pedestrians to points of interest, and the streets are so curvy there’s no line of sight more than a few hundred metres.

Found it eventually, got on a train… and it sat there for a bit. In the rear cab we could hear a Connex bloke on a radio talking about something being wrong, and noting that it was “full of people” and agonising over what was going to happen. Sure enough they kicked us all off (by announcing it initially on the platform, not on the train.. umm.. good one) and we changed platforms, got onto a working train, and headed off.

Not that any of this was as bad as on some lines: the Ringwood, Alamein, Glen Waverley, Frankston and Craigieburn lines all had problems with power and/or falling trees. At the radio station I’d heard John Rees at Connex, also agonising.

Got to my car and found on the way back that police were at one set of traffic lights, which had broken down, directing traffic through slowly.

Eventually got home, to find a tree branch in the front garden had (almost) broken off in the wind. At least we hadn’t lost power though.

Ah, one of those days.

PS. Thursday 9pm. ABC Opinion article: An unhealthy dose of bitumen for Melbourne