Too busy to blog this morning. (Reasons: 1 2 3 4 5)

Found this article on a Chinese language web site. I can’t read it, so I fed it into the Google translator facility.

I’m sure in the original Chinese, it’s completely grammatically correct — it’s the automated translation back to English that’s so entertaining. Some highlights:

Melbourne train passengers surge in the provincial government faces test of public transport services

crowded urban train in Melbourne on the number of passengers has created a new record, exceeding the 200 million people, but new data show that the surge in passengers And the provincial government to take the corresponding measures is not enough.
…

Governor Brumby said that in the past few years, travel by public transport of passengers is “extraordinary” rate of growth. He said that only in the past year, this increase in the number of about 25 million people.
…

Since 1999, Connex took over the operation of Melbourne’s train network, in Mexico City’s weekly trains running on schedule, a total increase of about 1,000 new vehicle trips.
…

Despite the crowded public transport to travel to the pressure, the governor of Brumby still on the continuous increase in the number of passengers that happy, because this increase is Victoria a sign of success.
…

Urban Public Transport Users Association, Brown (Daniel Bowen) said that this is not the first time publicly declared his commitment to public transportation system. “Earlier in 2006, the last of the urban public transport strategy (that is, we know that the Meeting Our Transport Challenges) promulgated ago, they said that this policy will solve any problems, but in fact did not resolve any problem. Based on past experience These projects are usually only thunder, rained on.” Mr. Brown said.

Reminds me a bit of the Glorious Rudd video.

Read all of it

Most unexpected question from the media pack at 1 Treasury Place this morning: Should Premiers Lane have a possessive apostrophe?

(That Brendan is a joker.)

I gave a mock answer for that one, which wound up proceedings, and a quick discussion followed on the merits or otherwise of punctuation in street signs. As it turns out, the Guidelines for Geographic Place Names says apostrophes shouldn’t be used, or that the possessive “s” at the ends of words shouldn’t be included.

And of course we were never going to get a lightning bolt in ACDC Lane.

Oh, the real topic of discussion? Congestion charging. It works in other cities. London is obviously the shining example, where the funds have gone into public transport — primarily buses — and usage has jumped. Provided you give people a viable alternative to driving into congested areas, why not encourage them to use that alternative by charging them extra?

Here, the government has ruled it out. I suppose they know it’d be unpopular. But the thing is… it works.

Congestion pricing “has worked around the world in about 100 different places, 100% of the time.” — Martin Wachs.

As with most transport issues, it’s a political problem, not a technical one.

Like apostrophes in street signs, I suspect it’ll never happen.

A Herald Sun article last week quoted figures showing that ditching cars and switching to PT could save you between $4,000 and $10,000 per year. (Seriously, it’s not just fuel — if you take into account finance, rego, insurance and repairs, it adds up fast.)

Problem is that somewhere in the sausage factory that is the media’s editing process, the reason for the PTUA pointing this out was lost. It’s no use telling people to ditch their cars if all they have is crap PT. It’s up to governments to provide a viable alternative, and as new figures showing Sunday bus patronage up 44% proves, when the PT option is there, people actually use it.

Separately, a new study called Unsettling Suburbia notes the outer suburbs are suffering through car dependence.

So what does it take to get lots of people willingly out of their cars? There’s a bunch of things (which even have a nifty acronym: SCARCE — standing for Safety, Comfort, Accessibility, Reliability, Cost and Efficiency), but the number one is waiting times. If the waiting time is too long (and at present it’s often more than the total travel time by car), then people will keep driving.

And it’s not just a matter of providing frequent services into the CBD and inner-suburbs, during peak hours. As the Unsettling Suburbia report notes, that’s already pretty much in place, and PT dominates that market. The problem is all the other trips — around the burbs, and outside peak hours. Little wonder that with only around 15% of Melbourne’s population going into the CBD on a typical working day, cars dominate for other trips.

No, what we need is a whole network of frequent services, running seven days a week, and into the evening, so you can travel from anywhere to anywhere, at most times of day, without having to wait. In other words, genuinely competitive with car travel.

And that’s what’s behind the call for services “every 10 minutes to everywhere” — trams, trains, and main road buses running every 10 minutes, right across Melbourne.

(If the animation’s already stopped, Right Click and select Play to play it again.)

Every 10 minutes is often enough that you’ll never wait very long, even without checking timetables.

Every 10 minutes is often enough that even if you walk to the stop and just miss the bus/tram/train, another one will pick you up in less time than it takes to go back get your car.

Every 10 minutes means operators don’t have to work hard at trying to co-ordinate good connections between services, because you’ll never wait very long anyway, no matter where you’re travelling.

And interestingly, every 10 minutes is about how many buses you need to carry 20% of the passenger load of the typical suburban 2-lane arterial road. In other words, to reach the government’s own 20% target, they need to run services every 10 minutes!

It’s also not as expensive as it might sound, because most of the rail/tram infrastructure and fleets are in place. The major cost is extra buses, and more drivers… and even that is small compared to the 18+ billion dollars worth of major transport projects proposed by the Eddington report.

It’s the type of thing needed to get people to happily reduce the number of cars in their household, and not suffer for it. On the contrary, everyone would benefit economically, there’d be reduced traffic congestion, and a big cut in transport-related emissions.

• Campaign web site: Every 10 Minutes to Everywhere.

Spot the disclaimer at the top of the page?

It’s because a growing number of journos seem to be finding my blog. Certainly nothing wrong with that; nice to see they’re on the cutting edge, gathering information from far and wide. Welcome, media people from everywhere!

But I’ve had to emphasise to them that my semi-coherent rambling (particularly about local buses) here isn’t necessarily PTUA policy. Actually it probably matches in intent most of the time, but here I’m likely to be a bit more ranty. So I thought I’d better pop the disclaimer in. I don’t think media people would just quote bits of my blog as if it was PTUA comment — they all seem more careful than that — but trying to make sure.

There are times when your comments go through the sausage factory that is the modern media machine, and come out elegantly encapsulating the issue, raising legitimate concerns, and capturing public opinion.

And then there are times like these:

But Public Transport Users Association president Daniel Bowen said most peak hour commuters wouldn’t see the new [seat] covers, “because other people will be sitting on them”. — Herald Sun 23/7/2008

Blargh. In the context it came out, it’s something of a meaningless, pointless comment — the overall tone of the conversation was that the new seat covers and other changes are relatively minor, but worthwhile.

Oh well, that’s the way it goes.

PS. Seems some nameless faceless subeditor somewhere made a boo boo. Not to worry… at least it’s got a few laughs around the place.

The Melbourne Press Club have put up the MP3 recordings of last month’s “Public Transport: Ticket to Where?” debate. Their web page is a bit confusing (you have to click on the Quicktime logos), but here’s a summary of the MP3s:

• 1. Introductions — Not really worth listening to.
• 2. Paul Mees — You can’t see the slides, but it’s worth a listen. The bus stops he’s referring to are pictured here. Towards the end he refers to the Department of Transport’s new org chart.
• 3. Jon Faine talks to Mees
• 4. Brian Negus (RACV)
• 5. Bernie Carolan (Metlink) — his reference to “all our eggs in one basket” refers to some guy in the paper that morning.
• 6. Jon Faine talks to Bernie Carolan, and audience questions — Myki, buses, Commonwealth Games, Rail capacity
• 7. Audience questions — rail capacity, my question to Brian Negus, and some guy rambling on about connections to Tasmania?!
• 8. Audience questions — oil prices, plug for Jon Faine’s Melbourne to London road trip

Happy listening.

Complete strangers say odd things to me sometimes. And it’s not just asking for directions.

Middle-aged tipsy lady on the way to the football one Friday night: It’s that man off the TV!
Me: [non-committal]
Lady: Yes, you are… who are you… the opposition health spokesman or something?
Me: Umm no, I’m a public transport advocate.
Lady: That’s it! Well you come across very well.
Me: Thanks.

Lady behind the desk at a clinic where I’d taken my dad: What did you think of the budget?
Me: [confused look]
Lady: I know who you are.

Cop standing next to me on the (packed) train last Friday night, as heaps of people got out at Glenhuntly, to another cop nearby: This might be the end of the zone.
Me: It’s because this is the last carriage, and the exit is back there.
Cop: [Looking over at me] Ah… well you’d know, wouldn’t you.
Me: Uhhh… sometimes.
Cop: How is the public transport tonight?
Me: Crowded! The last train was cancelled.

Elderly lady in Big W: Do you work here?
Me: No.

(Related: Recognition)

The Age yesterday ran a report on the PTUA’s submission to the Garnaut inquiry on climate change, with the headline being “Ban new freeways: transport group” — above another rather good article about cars not being on average any more efficient than 40 years ago.

It didn’t take long for the rev heads to spot the report, and as you might expect, they launched (within their own little forum) a tirade of abuse: everything from tree hugging, whale saving, dread locked morons to mungbean chewers and tree huggers. It was pretty clear none of them had read the Age article or the original press release, let alone the study itself.

Green groups (real greenies, that is, not just us sustainable transport advocates) also spotted the Age report, and a version of the story got a run in the West Australian. And there was a chat between yours truly and John Barron this morning on ABC News Radio. (MP3, 9Mb, 4 min 53 sec)

Perhaps to some people it sounds counter-intuitive: that building motorways doesn’t solve traffic congestion, but makes it worse. But not if you think about it. When each new road opens, people consider their travel options, and if it’s markedly easier to drive, many of them do. They drive longer, and in greater numbers, because they can, and the new road fills up. The end result is we have more space dedicated to roads, more cars on the road for longer, and more congestion and pollution.

Maybe we should turn it around: What proof is there that building motorways does help congestion? The quick answer is that there’s nowhere in the world (except perhaps Houston, where they spend billions on it every year, and oh, look at their greenhouse emissions!) where this has turned out to be the case.

The French have worked all this out, and last October President Nicolas Sarkozy pledged to stop building motorways and put the money into railways instead, to improve freight and passenger rail.

Anyway, this is only a small part of the report. What the rest of it is pointing out is that while transport isn’t the majority of greenhouse emissions, it is growing fast (up 30% in the last 15 years) and as part of an overall push to reduce emissions, action needs to be taken on transport. Hybrid cars will only help to a certain extent (and actually rely on stop-start congestion to be efficient), oil is running out, and other fuels are unproven (with biofuels in particular causing emissions during production, and resulting in food shortages).

Good to have sparked some debate about it, anyway.