New train timetables next month
Tomorrow it’ll be known if Metro has met their monthly punctuality target for the first time. As-of yesterday the daily update on the Metro web site was sitting on 88.7% (last updated 28/9), clear of the 88% cut-off. (That’s 88% of trains less than 5 minutes late.) For the first time in many moons, you may not be able to claim a freebie compensation ticket.
New timetables
New train timetables start on the 10th of October. One of the notable changes is Laverton to City (via Altona) trains starting, making use of the new third platform at Laverton. There’s only a couple of trains in each direction initially, but as more get implemented, it should make a big difference to Werribee people, who will have a faster, less crowded ride — and Altona people, who will have a better chance of getting a seat. There’s also some extra services on the Sydenham line.
The other significant change is a boost to off-peak services on my line, the Frankston line. Most of the improvement is weekdays during the day (buzzword: “interpeak”), with trains to run every 10 minutes. Weekday evening services will also go from every 30 minutes to every 20, up until 10:15pm outbound (and curiously, 11pm inbound).
Peak-hour-only commuters may scoff at this as something being inherently useless to them, but based on past experience, it is likely to boost patronage on the line — definitely a good thing. (It’d be even better if stations along the line better served major destinations, such as Southland.)
And both the changes are likely to help spread the peak-hour load by encouraging more people to travel outside rush hour, knowing they don’t face a long wait. That’s how it benefits peak-hour commuters.
So it’s definitely a step in the right direction. And hopefully a another step towards providing frequent 10 minute services on every line, seven days-a-week… though at the current rate, it will take decades to do every line.
As I’ve noted before, the move to 10 minute services is compelling. It’s so frequent that you don’t really need to look at the timetable — which means it works (at least in one direction) with Melbourne’s non-coordinated feeder bus services. If you do bother to look at the timetable, it’s (mostly) memorable. If a train is cancelled (and the likelihood is currently 0.8%), there’s barely enough time to walk back to the carpark (if you are in the minority and have driven to the station), let alone walk home, before the next one comes.
Which is just like a real Metro.
More services will definitely get more people off the roads and travelling by trains.
But of course, there are some niggly little issues.
Loop vs direct
The first issue is that, like the ten minute services launched on the Werribee line last year, every second train runs direct to Flinders Street. This isn’t a bad thing per se, since Flinders Street is the City’s busiest station, and close to a lot of city attractions, and these trains are in fact through-routed to Werribee, so they will also stop at Southern Cross. But the inconsistency is likely to cause some confusion, and it means Frankston trains will only operate through the loop every 20 minutes.
In many cases Loop to Frankston passengers will do better to catch the first train they see out of the Loop and then change at Richmond or Caulfield, but I wonder how many will realise and do so.
This appears to be the next step in a longer-term plan to run more (eventually all) Frankston trains via Flinders Street and Southern Cross only.
Dandenong/Frankston pairing
The Dandenong and Frankston lines operate in tandem. For instance together they provide a 10 minute service as far as Caulfield on weekends, and a 15 minute service in the evenings. This new change throws that out a little.
- City, Richmond, South Yarra and Malvern — off-peak weekdays — currently 8 trains per hour; a train every 7-8 minutes. This will now become 10 trains per hour, with gaps of up to 10 minutes. Probably not a huge concern, given only a marginal increase in the maximum interval.
- City to Caulfield — weekday evenings — currently a train every 15 minutes. This will now become 5 trains per hour, but with gaps of up to 20 minutes (and other gaps of only 5 minutes).
- City Loop (Caulfield loop) — weekday off-peak — currently 8 trains per hour, relatively evenly spaced. This will become 7 trains per hour, with gaps of up to 15 minutes, but as close as 2 minutes. Arguably not a huge issue given few people use the Loop for intra-CBD travel anyway, and the Burnley tunnel closely mimicks the weekday Caulfield loop tunnel, but the short intervals may cause delays.
A lot of this could have been solved if the Dandenong line got the same upgrade as the Frankston line, at the same time. Presumably they don’t yet have the capacity to do this just now (it doesn’t necessarily affect train numbers required, but it does affect driver and maintenance capacity). A cynic might think they wanted to get at least some upgrades in before the election…
See the Human Transit blog: The perils of succeeding “on average” for an interesting post on the problems of inconsistent frequencies.
Interconnections
The old timetable had Dandenong and Frankston trains pretty well isolated from the rest of the network, apart from Gippsland V/Line trains. Running every second Frankston train through to Werribee means that there now is a connection between the Caulfield group and the Northern group (Werribee, Williamstown, Sydenham, Craigieburn, Upfield) as well as V/Line services to Geelong, Ballarat, Bendigo and Seymour.
It remains to be seen whether this will be a problem (it’s already like this to a certain extent in peak hours), but there may be cases where a broken-down train on the Sydenham line may now indirectly cause delays on the Frankston and Dandenong lines. Metro will have to take the utmost care to ensure flow-on delays are kept to a minimum.
Interpeak only
Perhaps the biggest issue is that the 10 minute services only run interpeak on weekdays. This in fact means services from some stations (including Bentleigh) will be more frequent than during the peak-shoulder period (essentially because so many express trains bypass most of the zone 1 stations).
And of course on the weekends (every 20 minutes) and evenings (every 20-30 minutes), when there are lots and lots of cars on the road, that frequent service doesn’t yet exist… let alone on all the other lines, and on connecting bus and tram services for all the people who don’t live near stations.
Niggles aside, this is a positive move. Hopefully with further changes over the next couple of years, these issues will be fixed, and the push for frequent all-day services will continue.
Tags: Metro, public transport, trains
5 comments
Walking etiquette
I hope my kids don’t feel offended when I point out good etiquette to them. I think they probably know it all by now, but sometimes I’ll point it out just to remind them, and sometimes I’ll point it out/affirm their actions a little louder than usual so that others in the vicinity can get the hint — for instance on the escalators at stations: “That’s it boys, stand on the left.”
Little Lonsdale Street has busy but narrow footpaths. Something I’ve noticed is that some people haven’t figured out that when walking with someone else, it’s rude to take up the whole footpath when you encounter a person coming the other way.
Generally when faced with this, I’ll just stop dead on the left hand side of the path, rather than acquiesce and step aside onto the road. (Well why should I?) They usually take a hint then and grudgingly fall into single file.
(Not as bad: walking slowly 2+ abreast, filling up a footpath, oblivious of others in a hurry trying to overtake you. Still inconsiderate though.)
Tags: etiquette, walking
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The hunt for Big M egg flip
Billboards for Big M’s limited edition Egg Flip flavour are popping up all over the place.
I had a hankering to try it, to see if it was good if I remembered. So the kids and I went looking, in all the places that usually sell Big M (aka “Big M seller fellers”).
Safeway? Nope. Coles? No. Bakers Delight? No. Brumby’s? Nup. Bakery down the street which probably has a real name but I don’t recall what it is? Nope.
I had a whinge on Twitter about not being able to find it, and the very well-informed Twitterati came to my assistance: it’s only available at 7-11 at the moment.
That there is a marketing and distribution FAIL. If you’re going to spend up big promoting your limited edition product, either distribute it widely so people have a fighting chance at buying it, or at least mention that it’s only available at a particular outlet.
Otherwise, people who want your product are going to give up before they find it.
Sure enough we finally found it at 7-11. After the big search, I found the flavour a little underwhelming, to be honest.
Oh well. Who remembers this great Big M advert from 1988?
Tags: advertising, Big M, milk
12 comments
Spring is here
To me, Sunday seemed like the first genuine day of spring. Warm enough to ditch the jumper and walk around in a t-shirt most of the day. No hint of rain. The sun streaming (on and off) through the window. (So much so that I do believe I may even have a slight sunburn on my neck.)
I suspect some of the events of the last few months have left me a little down, but whatever the reason, I am very pleased to see the spring.
It’s probably my imagination, but it seems like it’s been a long cold winter. It hasn’t really; the BoM statistics indicate that mean temperatures this year have been pretty close to those recorded in the last thirty years. Though notably, August was colder than usual.
| Mean max | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1981-2010 | 21.0 | 17.5 | 14.8 | 14.2 | 15.7 |
| 2010 | 22.9 | 18.2 | 14.6 | 14.6 | 14.7 |
| Mean min | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug |
| 1981-2010 | 11.8 | 9.8 | 7.9 | 7.1 | 7.8 |
| 2010 | 14.5 | 9.8 | 7.5 | 7.3 | 7.6 |
Anyway, Sunday was a very pleasant change. Well, apart from the fact that I spotted two mosquitoes in the house.
Not the Rome Metro
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 twice in two days — including through Melbourne’s only station named after a superhero. (Or not.)
Eagle-eyed people might have noticed new letter indicators on the platforms at Parliament and Flagstaff. Apparently they’re to help platform staff at the most crowded PM peak locations (Parliament eastbound; Flagstaff westbound) announce which carriages have the most space, though I am yet to notice them do so… and I note these ones are on Flagstaff’s Burnley loop platforms, where they aren’t really needed.
A lot of tram stops, particularly those where the tram doesn’t stop in traffic, are getting platforms. The only catch with this, of course, is that on many of the routes getting them, no low-floor trams run yet, so for the moment it doesn’t help with accessibility. This one is at the terminus of route 64 in Brighton.
Tags: accessibility, Metro, public transport, trains, trams
9 comments
The New Delhi games mess
I’m finding the situation in New Delhi fascinating.
For those outside the Commonwealth and/or who haven’t heard, the city is having enormous problems getting ready for the Commonwealth Games. Sure, there are always stories like this ahead of big events, but in this case, there’s been an apparent terrorist attack (several tourists injured in a gun attack on a bus on Sunday), complaints about the athletes’ village being incomplete and unhygienic, a bridge collapsed (also injuring a number of people, on Tuesday), and part of a venue ceiling collapsing (on Wednesday) — and the Games are due to start in about a week and a half.
As it happens, last week I noted season one of the satirical TV series The Games on sale for $10 and snapped it up. It pokes fun at the preparations for the Sydney 2000 Olympics, with things like the 100 metre running track they discover is too short, and the transport crisis meeting that’s cancelled because the traffic is so bad nobody can attend. But I don’t think it covers anything quite so serious as what’s going on in Delhi.
One of the reasons I find the Delhi problems interesting is that in my paid work, we deal with IT people in India, and I went to a briefing which covered some of the cultural differences. One of the things I was told is that the culture is one of pride, and wanting to be seen to be helpful and able to do the job… to the point where sometimes if someone is asked if they can get the job done, they’ll readily say “yes! No problems!” even when it’s going to be quite difficult and complicated, and just getting it finished is not a foregone conclusion.
It may be a simplistic way of looking at it, but I wonder if a bit of that has gone on with the Games.
Don’t get me wrong — I think it’d be great if the event goes off without major problems, proving that developing countries like India are able to meet the challenge, just as South Africa did earlier in the year with the World Cup.
But at present, you’d have to say it’s not looking great.
Take out the trash day
One episode of The West Wing focuses on Take out the trash day, when the government dumps so much news onto the media that the bad stuff is lost amongst the sheer amount of information.
Last week the Victorian government had its equivalent, when over 200 reports were released on a single day.
I went along to Parliament House to pick up a few for a little light reading. Here’s how it looked: basically a room full of glossy reports. They must be keeping the graphic design and printing industries afloat with all this stuff.
It comes about because there’s a legal requirement for reports to be tabled while Parliament is sitting, and obviously after the June 30th end of financial year. Obviously though it means a heckuva lot of information to get through for the media, and although they try their best, you can bet some nuggets of information are getting lost in the tidal wave.
The Opposition argues that if they get elected, they’ll change it so reports are released as they are completed, rather than in a big pile. That would appear to make sense.
By the way, in a lot of cases, the reports are posted online by the relevant authority, so you don’t physically have to front-up to get a copy. For instance, those I grabbed to read on the train included: Department of Transport and Transport Ticketing Authority; V/Line; VicRoads.
So far I haven’t found anything earthshattering that the media hasn’t already highlighted — but I was more looking for useful statistics for future use, some of which I have found.
PS. Here’s one factoid for you: the Department of Transport (which doesn’t run any services itself) has 1241 full-time equivalent staff.
Big and bouncy
We got the trampoline six years ago. Problem is it’s been used less and less over the years, so yesterday we donated it to Emma and Nick and Zoe.
I’m relieved someone wanted it, actually. The fashion these days is the trampolines with the netting around the sides, which this old thing doesn’t have.
After the final bounce (see video), we had to pull most of it apart to fit it onto Peter’s stationwagon, but it didn’t take too long. And as a result we’ve gain back some of the (relatively small) back yard.
But we’ll never be able to unobtrusively/accidentally peek over the neighbour’s fence anymore.
Tags: trampolines
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