Hung parliamant
There must have been cutbacks at the ABC. Apparently they can’t afford a dictionary anymore. Or maybe host Virginia Haussegger can’t spell. (Not that I’d be having a go at her, oh no.)
It flashed up a few times during the ACT election coverage on Saturday night.
(For some reason it seems a version of ABC1 from north of the border comes through on one of the ABC digital channels. Makes for some interesting viewing sometimes.)
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My sister
My sister Susannah is lovely. Kind and funny. Thoughtful and smart.
Full of empathy when it matters — always up for a whingefest session on the phone, and understands what it’s like to be time-poor.
Her kids are nice, her husband Adrian’s a dude.
She’s successful — she’s made her business work, they seem to be going great guns.
And it’s her 36th birthday today.
Happy birthday Sis.
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Bad planning fixed
Remember a month ago when I noted the tree planted in the middle of the taxi rank next to Bentleigh railway station?
The tree forced taxi drivers out into traffic to move up to the front of the rank.
Today I noticed the local council has fixed it, moving the tree back to between the bus stop and the taxis. I don’t know if the taxi drivers complained… but I wouldn’t blame them if they had.
Or possibly the council had seen my blog. Either way, good that it’s fixed.
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Car culture
Now THIS is car culture.
Come to Kingston Central Plaza! Bring your hulking great four-wheel drive! In fact WE DON’T EVEN ALLOW compact cars in our car parks!
Yes, we’ve built a shopping centre just for you, where we wanted it, on cheap land. Why stick to the designated activity centres in the Melbourne 2030 plan when you can build on federal airport land and bypass all that? Good planning? Pah!
Of course, we’ll be in deep crap when Peak Oil comes, but until then, come on down and spend up big!
You know, if airports want to develop land, that’s fine, that’s fair enough. But it should be re-zoned to come under the appropriate state planning laws. Having the Federal Transport (eg Airports) Minister approving these big developments, with no knowledge or regard for the planning principles laid down for the surrounding city, is ridiculous.
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Missing the tram
If there’s one thing I miss since moving to the middle burbs, it’s the trams.
Some people talk about public transport culture vs car culture. Car culture is where the default is to jump in the car to go anywhere. PT culture is where the default is to go to the local tram, train or bus stop. When I lived in the inner suburbs, the quality of the service meant there really was a PT culture. It was easy to catch PT to more places. Elsewhere it’s car culture.
This is reflected in figures showing travel patterns, car ownership, and vulnerability to oil prices.
Growing up in East St Kilda, the bus to Prahran and the city was at the door, the tram to St Kilda Beach was a block away, the train two blocks away.
When I lived in Hawthorn, the tram to the city or Camberwell was at the end of the driveway. (The city-bound tram would screech around the corner, so you’d have a warning it was coming, despite not being able to see it.) There was a second tram route at the end of the street, a third about ten minutes walk away, and the station was about five minutes walk.
When I lived in Glen Huntly, it was a three minute walk to the tram to Elsternwick and St Kilda, or an 8 minute walk to the station.
I lived in other places too, but in the above cases, there was (reasonably) frequent, 7-day-a-week-until-late, easy to use public transport to shopping, work, the City, St Kilda, and most of the other places I wanted to go. I didn’t need a car (and for most of those years I didn’t have one.) That’s what makes a “public transport culture” — high quality services.
When I moved to my current place in I couldn’t afford to buy in a suburb with trams and trains anywhere near where my family live. So I went for the next best thing — a zone 1 train suburb.
So now I’m ten(ish) minutes walk from Bentleigh station — the train gives me north-south travel options, including into the city. But options in other directions are missing. The buses are there, but what’s key is that the level of service is vastly inferior to any tram — even though one of the buses is a Smartbus, and is better than many.
| Route | Peak freq | Weekday freq | Sat freq | Sun freq | Evening freq | Services per weekday* | Saturday* | Sunday* |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tram 67 | 8 mins | 12 mins | 15 mins | 15 mins | 20 mins |  80 |
71 |
49 |
| Bus 703 | 15 mins | 15 mins | 30 mins | 40 mins | 60 mins | 48 |
25 |
16 |
I can get to work by train, and to a lot of shops and parks by walking. But I can’t easily get to Southland by PT, so I usually drive. I can’t easily go to the movies in Brighton by PT, so I drive. I can’t easily visit my mum or my sister by PT, so I drive. I can’t easily go to St Kilda Beach by PT, so I don’t often go anymore.
We can’t have all of Melbourne criss-crossed by trams.
But we should be able to at least have the Smartbuses upgraded to tram service levels (and beyond), and rolled-out across all suburbs, so that more trips are easier by PT.
Sadly the government’s priority remains yet more roads, producing yet more traffic and yet more pollution.
*Weekday: Monday to Thursday (3 more trams on Friday nights). Full route service times counted only, except 703 Sundays which counts all Bentleigh to Blackburn services, as none of them go to Brighton.
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How many people?
A while ago I did a little digging for the purposes of quantifying the audience for different media, for a discussion within the PTUA about how many people see which outlet. I’ve recently skimmed through and grabbed some new figures. (Obviously it’s not just about the raw numbers — the demographic of the audience is important too.)
Local newspapers cover areas of varying sizes. Their circulations vary from about 10,000 upwards, with some of the bigger ones having circulations of well over 100,000. The Melbourne Times is 137,000, for instance. Being free papers delivered into residents’ mail boxes, readership perhaps a little harder to nail down.
The Herald Sun dominates the Melbourne newspapers (though The Age apparently does much better in the “AB” demographic). The free MX commuter newspaper has a higher readership than The Australian or Fin Review.
Sources: Fairfax, News Ltd. AFR and The Aust are estimated from national readership figures. The others may include a small number of people who read them interstate.
In TV, at 6pm it’s a battle between Channel 7 and Channel 9 news. At present in Melbourne, Channel 7 seems to have the upper hand, though it seems 9 often outrates it on Sundays, and sometimes on other days. But the ABC also does very well at 7pm. A full set of figures is a little hard to get from free sources, but here are some gleaned and estimated from information I’ve found online. Bear in mind they vary widely from day to day — this is just a sample from one day.
Sources: Oztam 1, Oztam 2, Channel 7, Crikey. Channel 10 and SBS are estimated from national viewing figures.
Radio is of course all over the place, as they have many news bulletins per day.
And the future? I’ll leave my theories on the MSM for another time.
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Nine Queens
Ever see the film Nine Queens? It was very enjoyable Argentine movie about a couple of conmen. I’m not sure where my copy is at the moment, but anyway…
(SPOILER FOLLOWS)
Read more
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Platforms 7 and 8
The pictures in the Heckler section on the back page of The Sunday Age this morning may look familiar…
I originally posted them here.
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