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PTUA transport

Platforms 7 and 8

The pictures in the Heckler section on the back page of The Sunday Age this morning may look familiar…

Sunday Age 12/10/2008

I originally posted them here.

By Daniel Bowen

Transport blogger / campaigner and spokesperson for the Public Transport Users Association / professional geek.
Bunurong land, Melbourne, Australia.
Opinions on this blog are all mine.

13 replies on “Platforms 7 and 8”

I would be ironic (and amusing?) to find that The Age might try to sue you for copying its content onto your blog. :-)

To be precise, this is what happens when someone who knows journalists writes a blog. Sometimes I’ll push an idea their way, sometimes they’ll find it by themselves.

As (I think) I wrote in an earlier comment, this is pretty sloppy journalism if all they’re doing is trawling blogs to get their ideas, materials, and images. This woudl be called plagiarism in the academic community.

Perhaps a quick message to the ABC’s MediaWatch? They have a ‘tip line.’ :)

I saw that yesterday in the Age.

Daniel, I know this is off the topic but I am a new member of the PTUA, and I know quite a few journalists as well from the newspapers and TV.

Actually Nick, I’m still getting around to buying you that membership for your birthday. I think I’ll do it online.

You’ll pardon this segment of irrelevance to the topic, I hope Daniel…but a new eager member might be headed for Flinders Lane soon.

While on a transport topic, have you seen the new timetables for Frankston afternoon peak? Those of us travelling from a loop station to between Caulfield and Cheltenham have lost the 5.16 (from Southern Cross) so now there is a 26 min PEAK wait between the 5.01 and 5.27 trains. And if that 5.01 gets cancelled, pity anyone past Flagstaff trying to get on a stopping all stations.

I fail to see the logic. Am I missing something? Or is it a misprint? Is the 5:13 from Flinders meant to continue to Franga?

No, it’s not a misprint — see the Metlink web site. They’ve slotted another Dandenong train in there to relieve the crowding, leaving the Frankston one running direct from Flinders Street to Richmond. Obviously the best thing to do is to catch the first train to Richmond (or even Caulfield) then change trains. I suspect in most cases, platform 4 (Burnley lines) will be less crowded than the Dandenong trains.

Of course, being the only non-loop Frankston train (along with the 7:15am from Carrum) is a problem — some loop people aren’t going to know it’s there.

Were they intending to take all Franga trains out of the loop at one stage?

I wouldn’t object to them doing it, as long as it was a full time move and not just ‘peak only’. And of course, assuming that they would use the extra paths to provide more than a 15 minutely service to Dandenong.

Whoever wrote that sounds like a real smartarse. You can reproduce that image on ANY day of the week on platform 4/5. If I didn’t get my butt kicked by the Connex thugs, I’d pull out the camera and do it myself.

Somebody: there’s a few ideas being thrown around. I thought at one stage more Frankstons would come out of the loop. Going back to the 80s-90s pattern, the stoppers would run direct. We’ll see what happens with the next change, around April ’09.

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