January’s train
I got to have a short ride in the new X’Trapolis train introduced into service today. The government calls it “Train 2″, however the journos prefer call it after the month it was meant to be in service, eg “The January train”.
For all the consternation about a reduction in seats, seeing it in the flesh confirms my view that the design is okay. Basically there are no 3-in-a-row seats (which often go to waste as few people want to sit in the middle), and a wider aisle. There’s also a lot more straps to hold onto along the aisle — which surely should be a priority for an upgrade to the rest of the current fleet.
The scrolling displays are higher resolution, as are the external destination indicators, making them much clearer and more readable than on the older X’Trapolis trains.
One other difference is the wheelchair ramps are secured in the passenger doorways, like in a Siemens train.
This is the second train of 38 in the current batch. Because of the delays in getting these trains into service, it’s got a lot of media interest.
See tonight’s channel 7 or 9 news to find out got said in the vox pops.
- Trainspotting: which type of train is which
- Why the new trains will only run on half the network (and why it doesn’t really matter)
Update 5:50pm. Apparently this afternoon it broke down at Glen Waverley. Metro Trains said in a Tweet: the new train ran back-2-back services over 8 1/2 hours & dev’d a fault at GW. It’s having a full exam and necessary repairs.
Tags: public transport, trains
4 comments
Sunday Life
Sometime last year one of the magazines that came with The Sunday Age, Sunday Life, changed its formula. I used to find at least something interesting while flicking through it. Since the change, nothing.
I was thinking that it had turned into a women’s magazine. One only has to look at the author names of letters they’ve published over the last four weeks to know it’s almost entirely women who are reading:
(The unisex names were Hilary — almost certainly female I suspect — and Sam.)
But here’s what clinched it: I found the blurb to prospective advertisers:
Sunday Life is a magazine which delivers our readers a distinctive point of difference on Sunday and a fresh approach to a discerning female audience not found in any other newspaper inserted magazine.
and:
Sunday Life knows what women care about.
So… any of you blokes out there — don’t feel guilty for not even glancing at this mag anymore.
Tags: magazines, The Age
13 comments
Using Myki from within a wallet
For $1.35 billion, you’d hope there would be some benefits to Myki. Here’s one: if you take a little care, it can be used from within a wallet. So you need never take it out, unless an inspector needs to see it.
At least once this has enabled me to validate and jump on a train that I would have missed if I’d had to get my Metcard out, stick it physically into the validator, then pull it back out again.
Of course it’s not guaranteed to work in all wallets, but if it’s on one side, and held flat on the scanner (and the same advice as usual applies: don’t wave/”swipe” it, hold it still), and there aren’t any similar cards in there that confuse the scanner, then you’ll probably be in luck.
Hint: Don’t try it out for the first time at a busy station with a queue of people behind you.
Tags: Myki, public transport
11 comments
Day 16 and still waiting
I’ve got a spare Myki card that I’m testing online topups with. $1 at a time, to see how long they take to come through.
How it should work is this:
- You make a payment via the web site
- The web site and central database sends out a message to all the Myki vending machines and scanners saying your card has been topped-up. While it’s supposed to take anything up to 24 hours, it’s sometimes much quicker. But there have been numerous cases of it taking longer, or the transaction disappearing completely.
- You present your Myki card at a vending machine or scanner. It sees the waiting topup message, and writes the updated balance to the card (which is the reference point for what your balance is and for your transactions).
- A message goes back to the central database to say the topup has been received by the card, so the account balance there can be updated.
Fine, that’s fairly standard request-response stuff. And to the user it’s conceptually pretty simple. (London’s Oyster is similar, but more limited, as you have to nominate the station where the topup is to be sent.)
The catch? Only one topup can be in progress at a time. That is, if you do a second topup online, it waits until the first is fully processed before the second one gets sent to the machines, and thus to the card. Under normal circumstances this shouldn’t be too much of a problem, given you wouldn’t normally send through two topups in close succession.
So anyway, my first couple of tests went through okay.
But a topup I did on the 2nd of March has reached the card, but got stuck on the last stage of the process. The confirmation of its receipt is somewhere between the vending machine that received it, and the central database.
This in turn has blocked a second online topup that I did on the 4th of March. More than two weeks ago. I can still use the card, and topups at the machines will work fine, but any more online topups won’t work until the that stuck transaction is cleared.
It was suggested that I should travel with the card, to see if that would unclog it. I did so yesterday. That travel history has been transmitted back to the central database and is visible on the web site, but still the topup transaction is stuck.
So hopefully you can understand when I say yet again: Don’t use Myki. But if you must, for gawds sake avoid online topups.
(The other card, which I actually use, and only topup at machines, is going okay. My comments from the end of January still stand.)
Tags: Myki, public transport
38 comments
King Street
What’s so special about King Street, in Melbourne’s Central Business District?
Well, it’s the only main street in the Hoddle Grid which has absolutely no scheduled public transport running along it.
So you might think, given the rhetoric is to help people get onto PT, especially for trips into the CBD, that they’d avoid giving private vehicles along King Street priority at intersections — especially since Wurundjeri Way and Citylink are available as city bypass routes.
But no.
King Street is the only main street in the CBD that gets 2/3 of the signal cycle time at most intersections — 60 out of 90 seconds, which means pedestrians get less time to cross it, and trams and buses along intersecting streets have to wait. In the case of the trams, they stop despite the lack of any tram stops there.
King Street is about the only main street in the CBD that gets green arrows for right-turning traffic, even in the middle of the day. (At least one Exhibition Street intersection gets them in peak hour, but certainly not at lunch time.)
King Street and Bourke Street is one of the only CBD intersections where turning cars don’t have to do hook turns to stay out of the way of the trams. At least, that’s how it works in practice. It’s uncertain quite what was intended, because although the correct arrow markings are on the street for hook turns, no signs are displayed, so motorists ignore the arrows. So it’s not uncommon to see trams having to gong their bells because of cars blocking them, and also cars zooming off narrowly avoiding pedestrians when they see a gap in the traffic.
All this makes King Street an anachronism. It belongs to the 60s car-domination thinking which is long gone. It probably doesn’t need PT services serving it (given blanket coverage of surrounding streets), but it sure as hell shouldn’t have the road traffic priority that it does.
Brief things and followups
Star Trek TNG — We started watching them all about a year ago, and are so far up to season 6. I wonder if in remastering for DVD, they changed the framing of some shots — it’s surprising how often we spot a boom mike in shot. (Reminds me: Must watch the “Car Pool” interview with Patrick Stewart, being driven around by Robert “Kryten” Llewellyn.)
Washing machine — I’m liking the new washing machine, but the 6.5 Kg capacity does have some disadvantages. I feel guilty about running it when it’s not full, so it’s taken a little re-organising of the schedule to work out the best days to run it. And when it does get used, hanging it all out on the line seems like a much bigger job than it used to be.
Grey water — I try and save my grey water; specifically I have a bucket underneath the shower which we fill up while waiting for the water to get hot. But sometimes if I’m slack at emptying the bucket, it sits there in the shower, full of water. Sometimes I notice this attracts mosquitos. I’m not sure how they get in, but listening to this Background Briefing programme on mozzies and dengue fever in Queensland recently has prompted me to ensure the buckets are emptied promptly.
The Weber Q barbecue which I got on points — I love it. Everything tastes better when cooked on it.
UPDATE — Mucho amusement that XKCD from the other day references a Star Trek TNG episode we watched on Monday.
Metlink’s revenue protection plan
The Metlink Revenue Protection Plan published by The Age on Saturday had some interesting points. Some notes I made while looking through it (some of which were not included in the article):
Page 12 seems to accept that in most cases, more staff will reduce most types of evasion. Can’t argue with that — most types of automated checking (eg validators and fare gates) can’t catch evaders:
(Strategies to reduce evasion include) Increased staffing, improve use and deployment of staff.
Page 14 spells out that the policy is not to fine people who don’t re-validate their already valid tickets:
By law, passengers are required to validate a ticket before every journey, and it is desirable to encourage this behaviour where possible, particularly in the light of the impending new ticketing system. However, it is not intended to enforce this by issuing a RONC in cases where an otherwise valid ticket has been initially validated but not re-validated for that journey as this behaviour is not classified as fare evasion.
This one issue is likely to continue to be vexed under the new ticketing system.
Page 21 considers attitudes to Authorised Offices and fines, noting that most people consider the size of fine is “out of touch”. Can only agree. $174 for a first fare evasion offence; and it goes up from there. The problem is a lot of regular evaders don’t get caught, so they’ve made the fine high to try and convince people to pay. I think a lower fine, with more regular checking, is a better way to cut evasion rates.
Customers also believe the size of the fine is ‘out of touch’ with the magnitude of the offence.
Page 26 notes that the ticket system needs to be easy to understand, and consistent (maybe they should fix the first validation requirement on Myki Short Term tickets bought from railway station machines then):
Depending on where you are in the system, as a consumer you will be faced with differences in ticket range, methods of payment, customer information and with a ticket which may be validated or not.
Page 47 spells out that the CBD station gates are staffed only from 7am to 10pm. This was written by Connex, under their contract, but it doesn’t seem to have changed under Metro (I need to check the contract though).
…all CBD barriers are under supervision by staff from 7.00am to 10.00pm daily…
I find it surprising and disappointing they don’t staff until the last train, given large numbers of people still in the CBD most nights – surely consistency is important to remind people that you must have a ticket, no matter what time you’re travelling?
And what happens when they close off the Elizabeth Street exit to Flinders Street after 10pm, and leave it unstaffed? This:
Page 52 says there are only 12 bus AOs for the whole of Victoria. Mind you, most bus tickets get checked by the driver, so evasion is low, and is mostly concession fraud rather than not having a ticket at all.
The majority of offences detected on buses relate to concession eligibility.
…the Bus Association of Victoria has employed 12 full-time AOs to help reduce fare evasion across Melbourne and Regional Victoria.
Page 54: Did they really not gazette (eg introduce into law) the Myki Fares+Ticketing Manual until well after Myki commenced on regional town buses?! That’s weird.
There have been no reports of non compliance submitted since myki has commenced trialling, as the myki fares and ticketing manual has not been gazetted.
Page 57 talks about V/Line, but makes no mention of problems with conductors being unable to walk through multiple-unit V/Locity trains to check tickets on the whole train. So on long trains they can only move through by swapping carriages at stations.
Page 66 includes the total network-wide cost of fare evasion: $62,018,697 million per year, as-of the first half of 2009. The biggest cost is on trams ($35 million), followed by trains ($21.5 million) and buses ($5.5 million).
Page 72 notes that only around 2.39% of tram passengers get their tickets checked by Authorised Officers. It also includes figures for other modes (pages 67-72), but remember, on buses almost all tickets are checked by bus drivers as well, and on trains most passengers going through CBD and other major stations effectively get their tickets checked at the gates.
The difference on trams is that tickets are only checked by AOs. So in other words, on any tram trip, you’ve only got a 1 in 41 chance of getting your ticket checked. No wonder tram fare evasion is costing the most of the three modes.
- You can read the entire report yourself by accessing it from The Age’s web site.
Cluster headaches are back for autumn
On Friday night at my sister’s place, we were were swapping war stories of head pains. She had a read of the Wikipedia article on cluster headaches and, noting the description, the illustration by J.D.Fletcher, and nickname “suicide headache”, she had to admit they piss all over her puny migraines.
“Cluster headache is probably the worst pain that humans experience. I know that’s quite a strong remark to make, but if you ask a cluster headache patient if they’ve had a worse experience, they’ll universally say they haven’t. Women with cluster headache will tell you that an attack is worse than giving birth. So you can imagine that these people give birth without anesthetic once or twice a day, for six, eight, or ten weeks at a time, and then have a break. It’s just awful.”
My cluster headaches are back for autumn — only mildly, I must emphasise. It took until the third day to realise that the headache I had wasn’t going away with Aspirin or Paracetamol. Sure enough popping one of the previously medicated pills and slurping down lots of caffeine in strongly brewed tea and Coke in the afternoon and evening helped sooth the pain. That was Thursday. The catch was I found myself wide-awake at 2am on Friday morning…
While I’ve had some pretty bad ones in the past (particularly before they were properly diagnosed and the medication prescribed), they’re nowhere near as bad as they once were, and nowhere near as bad as some others have them. I’m just glad I know the medication (Veracaps) that helps me.
And I have nothing but sympathy for those who manage with them, without help.
PS. Forgot the worst bit about re-reading the article on cluster headaches: Ingestion of alcohol or chocolate is recognized as a common trigger of cluster headaches when a person is in cycle or susceptible. I don’t really care about alcohol, but chocolate — oh no!
