2R3YM – That’s the Myers facade backwards
There’s often some interesting pictures to be had from the sixth floor of the renovated Myer store. I snapped these the other day.
Tags: architecture, buildings, construction, Myer
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Anti-pigeon defences
And now for something completely different: anti-pigeon defences.
Pigeons can get everywhere, making nests, leaving droppings. These ones seem very interested in the next trains from Caulfield.
It’s probably gone mostly unnoticed, but over the past few years, various methods to prevent them roosting have become commonplace.
In the case of Caulfield station, they’ve put in a lot of netting that cordons off parts of the platform roof areas, including the tops of the signs. (I haven’t checked if they’ve fitted the sign above, which is in the subway.)
Solar-powered road signs now often have spiky bits on them, as do increasing numbers of shop signs, including big ones like this. (I think it looks a little odd up close.)
On this building in Centre Road, Bentleigh, there are fake owls around the top. I’m not sure how effective they are.
But despite these methods, sometimes the pigeons still win.
Tags: Bentleigh, birds, buildings, Caulfield, Metro trains, pigeons, Woolworths
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Coin deposit reduces dumped shopping trolleys – why don’t they all do it?
Since Woolworths introduced gold coin deposits for trolleys at Bentleigh, you almost never see their trolleys abandoned in the streets. The same can’t be said for Coles Bentleigh, who appear to have some trolleys requiring a coin, and some not — I don’t understand the logic of this. On a walk last night, we passed three (non-deposit) Coles trolleys in quick succession on a single block of Jasper Road.
It seems pretty clear that (like the drink container deposits used in some states), coin deposits reduce the problem. I wonder why Coles don’t go ahead and implement it fully, especially in suburbs like Bentleigh where their major competitor already uses it.
Abandoned trolleys can be reported online for Wesfarmers/Coles group chains (Officeworks, K-Mart, Bunnings etc) here or for most other chains (Woolworths/Safeway, Target, some IGA) here.
Tags: Coles, supermarkets, Woolworths
15 comments
How much ground level parking is there in Melbourne’s CBD?
What’s the ultimate waste of space in a city centre? Ground level, single level parking.
Along with the access space required to get cars in and out, it’s wasted space because apart from perhaps $20-30 per day in revenue, it isn’t used for anything.
This post from Gordon Price compares a few cities — the contrast between Houston and Toronto is particularly stark. (There are more in this discussion thread at Skyscraperpage.com.)
How would Melbourne stack up? I’ve had a go at it, by plotting the red onto a Nearmap image, and scouring Nearmap at high resolution, then checking Google Streetview to see if a carpark was ground level parking, or a multi-storey (which at least piles cars on top of each other, meaning more efficient use of the land — even if it is still parking and is fugly) or parking on top of buildings.
I’ve only done within the Hoddle Grid. Have I missed any, or made any errors? Leave a comment.
You’d have to say that in summary, there’s not much. The tiny carpark near Lonsdale/Elizabeth Streets that I used to watch from on-high has vanished, and is being developed.
The parking at the back of The Age building (Lonsdale Street, behind Spencer Street) will, I’m told, vanish when the whole property is re-developed in the nearish future. The back of The Old Mint building (Latrobe/William Streets) is the other prominent area.
There’s a small amount of parking in front of the William Angliss Institute building. This is a perfect example of why it’s such a waste of space. Ten cars accommodated, taking up about half the open/garden space in front of the building.
Apart from that, the remaining surface parking is mostly in the grounds of churches — St Paul’s, St Francis, Wesley Uniting. (Scots Church and others have multi-level parking.)
And of course… there’s street parking, particularly along the non-tram streets such as Lonsdale, Russell and Exhibition.
See, in a city centre that has around half-a-million people a day visiting it, you can’t afford to have lots of people bring their cars. If you try and find space to leave hundreds of thousands of vehicles, that doesn’t work — not to mention the traffic congestion it creates. Bringing them in by more efficient means (particularly mass transit) is the only way it can work.
PS. Thanks for suggestions. The map has been slightly modified.
At Brighton beach last night
We were trying to escape the heat, which really wasn’t successful — apart from right next to the water, it was as warm by the beach as it was at home. (For you out of towners, it reached about 40 degrees yesterday, with a low of 24 overnight.)
But we did meet this critter. Very cute.
Tags: Brighton beach, seals, weather
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How many people watched the fireworks in different cities?
Happy new year. This was the view last night from Footscray, looking along the Maribyrnong towards the City. By the time they’d finished, there was something of a smoke haze. (From where we were, we couldn’t see the spire fire.)
I was curious how many people turn out to watch fireworks for New Year’s Eve in different cities around the world. Here’s some figures I found looking around on Google News, and watching SBS News.
(I’ve tried to stick to post-event figures, not expected attendances, and have only used cities where an actual hard estimate was given, not a vague one like “hundreds of thousands”. Got a cite for other figures? Let me know.)
Obviously in the northern hemisphere it’s winter, and cold weather would put people off. But watching the footage and reading the articles, it’s clear that these events are major drawcards for tourists as well as locals.
In many cities NYE is obviously a major event — including in Melbourne — and takes a lot of organising of fireworks, street closures, emergency services and transport.
It’s funny to think that just twenty years ago, there was no official marking of New Year’s Eve in Melbourne. I remember going into the city for the countdown in about 1993, waiting for midnight (no fireworks that I recall) then hurriedly catching the last tram home at about 12:05am.
1999 into 2000 was the first time I recall it being a major event, with all-night trams and trains (for the first time?). Then it seemed to get some momentum in terms of crowd numbers, with more and more each year, but the organisation fell short, with no all-night transport except Nightrider until the now infamous 2003-04 debacle.
Since then things have been a lot more organised, and as the city has grown, people have also responded to the event, with about double the crowd last night compared to 2003-04.
Someone made some comments the other day about New Year’s Eve bringing people together, a shared experience that strangers can enjoy together. That might be misty-eyed, but I like the sentiments. Certainly I wished some strangers a happy new year last night.
Tags: New Year's Eve
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The new Swanston Street superstops – do they work?
Last week the first of the new Swanston Street tram superstops opened. On Monday I went down at lunchtime to have a look, and came across Lord Mayor Robert Doyle, City of Melbourne planner Rob Adams, and Yarra Trams’ Michel Masson all down there having a look, and talking to the media about it.
Robert Doyle fronts the media — note the man incorrectly crossing the tracks behind the tram
It’s good to see this space finally being rid of cars, and the priority given to the main users of Swanston Street — pedestrians, tram passengers, and cyclists. And of course it’s great to get some more accessible tram stops in the CBD — the first for Swanston Street that are actually within the Hoddle Grid.
During the first couple of weeks, they’ve got people dressed as lifeguards and umpires etc using some humour to direct people to the right spots.
This is important because the space needs to deal with tram passengers, pedestrians, and cyclists. Thankfully motorists are (theoretically) out of the equation, though at one stage I observed a motorcyclist unwittingly ride in.
The real problems here are that (a) they’re a unique design — in fact one keen observer reckons they’re unique in the world –and (b) they’re not intuitive.
For pedestrians, it’s simply not obvious that the space where you board the trams is not where you should walk along. For cyclists it’s a little clearer where they should be, and from what I saw, they seemed to realise they needed to stop and give way to passengers getting on and off trams.
I haven’t been there at the relevant times, but I’m particularly curious to see what happens when large numbers of tram users getting on and off (such as during the University peaks) intersect with large numbers of cyclists.
Even after adding small “bicycle” markings onto the bike lane, pedestrians and passengers seem confused. Maybe they’ll learn, but it will take some getting used to — something acknowledged by Masson and Doyle (and Adams I assume). I’d expect some further tweaking, but I doubt there’ll be any major re-design any time soon.
Like anything else, it requires the critical mass of people to know how to use them, and then (most) visitors will hopefully just follow everybody else. Whether this will happen, only time will tell.
And in the mean time, work will begin on the next two stops, further south.
A steam train passes
This afternoon I heard steam train whistles, and after some digging, discovered it was R-class R707 headed down to Frankston, and that it would be coming back a little later.
Happy to take a break from the sorting out of paperwork that I’d been doing, I took a punt at the time it would pass back through Bentleigh, and headed down to find a vantage point, settling on a spot near Patterson station.
The train seemed to be coasting through here; it’s probably downhill from the Patterson Road bridge to the Brewer Road underpass.
You’ll note the people on the bridge; they were some of the (other?) trainspotters in attendance nearby.
Steam trains regularly run around Melbourne and Victoria, generally organised by Steamrail and 707 Operations.
