Has Metro turned the corner on punctuality?
Expect some gloating from Metro today. The Track Record monthly report for May was released yesterday, and shows a marked improvement in train punctuality.
We already knew the May average had improved to a not very spectacular 82.2%, but the detailed figures might show better the first effects of the early May timetable change.
From January’s quite decent figures (which might reflect much-reduced patronage for the first few weeks of the month), there’s been a steady decline to April, but on most lines this was arrested in May, and on some things improved markedly.
Remember that in the background, patronage continues to grow, and this could partly account for the steady decline between February and April. Siemens speed restrictions have also had a big effect on the lines those trains run on.
Taking it group by group, on the Burnley lines punctuality has stopped dropping, and on the Glen Waverley line (which started running direct on weekdays until lunchtime) punctuality went up noticeably (from 88.2 to 91.7). But none of the lines are back up at the levels seen in January and February.
Similar story on the Clifton Hill group:
On the Northern group there’s an improvement in May, but clearly a long way to go. It’d be interesting to know if unhooking the Werribee/Williamstown lines interpeak on weekdays has helped here.
The new Cross City group shows a big jump, with Werribee up 12 percent and Frankston up 15 percent. It’s come at a cost though: the change to an impossible-to-remember 11/22 minute timetable for Werribee and Williamstown lines in peak, the much-hated Altona shuttles in off-peak, and a lot of padding in the timetables — yesterday for instance my train into the City in the morning departed South Yarra about 90 seconds early, and ended up having to wait at Richmond. There’s also the controversial removal of most trains from the City Loop.
The Pakenham/Cranbourne and Sandringham lines have also improved a lot. Sandringham is now run pretty much independently from other lines, and it shows. I wonder how much padding was added to Pakenham/Cranbourne line.
I expect these last two sets of figures to improve when the June figures are out, due to the lifting of Siemens speed restrictions. The 28 day rolling punctuality average is up at 88% now. (Update Wednesday morning: 88.1%.) But the question will be whether these figures can be sustained… after all, in most cases they’re only back at where things were in February. They’ve still got a long way to go.
Might be time for me to put my personal stats together again. What are others seeing on their travels?
- PS. For those who travel only in peak hour and think the punctuality can’t be that high (not even when the threshold for “late” is 5 minutes), this is worth reading: If on-time performance is 96%, why am I always late?
Tags: Metro trains
9 comments
Ambulance membership fees drop by half this Friday
I missed the media coverage of this: Coalition cuts ambulance membership fees in half:
“From July 1, ambulance membership costs will drop from $150 to $75 a year for families and $75 to $37.50 a year for singles – that is just 20 cents a day for families and 10 cents a day for singles,” Mr Davis said.
While some might have concerns that the ambulance service needs more investment to keep up with demand, I thought this was a good policy. For many people, $150 is enough for a family subscription that you’d think twice before paying it. Halving it to $75 makes it pretty much a no-brainer.
I’m not even sure if a measure like this necessarily means a lot more demand for ambulances. In fact it might well attract a lot more subscribers (apart from the increased government subsidy to cover the price drop).
So… if you were thinking about joining or renewing, given they don’t seem to have announced anything around refunding or extending existing memberships, you might want to wait until Friday when the prices go down!
(Knowing the Coalition had this policy, this is why at the start of this year I renewed for one year, not three as they were suggesting.)
Doctor Who boxer shorts? Seriously?
Now I’ve seen everything.
(Spotted in Target Bourke Street. There were also some 4th Doctor designs.)
Tags: boxer shorts, Doctor Who, Target
7 comments
The bus to nowhere
Apparently the buses at this bus stop have a destination of “None”.
The addition to the sign in this case is accurate. It’s a spot where buses layover in William Street between runs.
Apparently they’ve put bus stop signs up there to stop motorists parking there if they don’t notice the Bus Zone signs. But they’ve made them old-style bus stop signs so that passengers don’t try and board buses there.
Metlink do have a design for Set Down Only bus stops; there are a few around the CBD. I wonder why they don’t use those instead — they’d probably do the job, but be less confusing.
Tags: buses, parking, transport
4 comments
Server hiccup
If you can see this, then (hopefully) things are getting back to normal.
A server move was in the offing, but part of it happened sooner than I thought, effectively taking the site offline, and I didn’t have time earlier to fix it. Long story.
Please leave a comment if you see any more weirdness.
By the way, may I recommend FreeDNS if you need to temporarily point a domain to somewhere other than where your usual hosting ISP is pointing it.
Westgate bridge: induced traffic coming soon
There you go; the RACV said again yesterday (as they have done in the past) that the $1.4 billion M1/Westgate Bridge upgrade (including the new lanes opened yesterday) will be swamped within a decade.
Brian Negus, of the RACV, welcomed the opening of the fifth lane. It was the final link in the freeway corridor so it would relieve the frustrating congestion, he said.
…
Within eight to 10 years, the West Gate would once again be struggling to handle the number of cars using it daily, Mr Negus said.
So, it’s another example of induced traffic: when you expand a road, traffic grows to fill it.
(And ironically this 25% expansion in bridge capacity came a couple of months after Williamstown and Altona Loop trains reduced peak hour frequencies from every 20 minutes to every 22 minutes, in an attempt to boost punctuality. Meanwhile buses in the fast-growing Werribee area remain at mostly every 40 minutes, with station car parks packed, so accessing public transport is difficult for many residents.)
Transport Minister Terry Mulder recently said “we can’t build our way out of congestion”. Department of Transport Secretary Jim Betts said the same thing yesterday.
Apparently RACV still believes you can… even though it’s never actually worked.
The RACV continues to argue for the north-east freeway (through Banyule Flats, or further east) and the east-west tunnel (under Carlton). If you are an RACV member and you disagree with more motorway expansion, you should let them know. And if you’re only a member for the roadside assistance, you should know there are other organisations offering that service which don’t lobby (at least overtly) for more motorways. (And it’s often cheaper than RACV.)
(Pic: from the ABC’s Ryan Sheales on Twitter)
Tags: induced traffic, RACV, roads, traffic
11 comments
Unit pricing: I suspect this is the most expensive product in the supermarket
I suspect this is the most expensive product in the supermarket, per gram.
$1212 per 10 grams makes it $121,200 per kilogram.
Whereas the imitation stuff is one twelve-hundredth the price.
Preaching to the converted?
There’s a billboard facing the light rail (tram) line to St Kilda, near the City Road station. As far as I can see, from its positioning, it is visible only to tram passengers.
What’s it advertising this month? It’s Metro’s “This is me” campaign.
These adverts have come under some criticism.
…encouraging yet more passengers on to our packed trains is a bit like running an ad campaign for a concert that sold out months ago. As much as we’d like to inspire more people to use public transport, they’d only be disappointed.
– Time to put the brakes on Metro’s advertising spending spree, The Age
But there’s an important point lost in some of the debate, which was hidden away in this article on predictions that Metro patronage will double in the next ten years:
The documents obtained by The Sunday Age show that the next decade will see a surge in the use of all modes of public transport: not only will train patronage rise at all times of the day and on weekends, bus travel is expected to double and tram use is predicted to rise by one third.
They don’t need to advertise to attract more passengers in peak hours. They already have all the passengers they can handle.
But growth in the off-peak periods, when there are trains and track capacity to spare, would have to be an important way for Metro to increase revenue. It can be sparked by running extra services (after all, increasingly weekend and evening services are crowded, and waiting times are often excessive), and the lure of extra off-peak revenue is probably the motivation for the above advertising, and for the Metro slogan of “For everyone, every day”.
I was going to write a bit more on this point, but realised I already have done so, so I won’t bother again.
As such, perhaps looking more broadly than just trains, the campaign might encourage tram and bus users do use public transport for more of their travel. Don’t know.
Still, I was faintly amused by the placement of the billboard.
Tags: advertising, Metro, trams
4 comments
