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transport

Domain tunnel closed. Gridlock? What gridlock?

GRIDLOCK will begin to choke Melbourne’s roads from Friday night, but the full impact of bridge and tunnel closures for maintenance won’t bite until the New Year. Motorists are being advised to steer clear of the city, or they could experience delays of up to an hour. — Herald Sun: Traffic chaos expected as West  ... [More]

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Consumerism Friends and loved ones News and events transport

Christmas wrap-up

Christmas Day was largely spent with family, eating too much, playing with a giant cushion-like water balloon (which burst when, tragically, nobody was watching/filming) and swapping presents. Our haul this time around included a Wii U, which should be fun, and for my own personal stash I got some great movies on Blu-ray (Help, and  ... [More]

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News and events

Merry Christmas

Thanks perhaps to a couple of big presents this year, our small aging plastic Christmas tree looks more Christmassy than usual (yay rampant consumerism!) — though a lot of the lights have stopped working, and need to be replaced. Hope everyone’s had a good year… have a merry Christmas and a happy new year.

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Blog sponsorship Geek

A case to keep my shiny new phone safe

My new Google Nexus 5 phone is going very nicely, thanks very much. But I was pondering getting a case for it. The last thing I’d want is for it to be dropped and damaged. Fortuitously, the good people at MobileZap asked me if there was a product on their site I’d like to review  ... [More]

Categories
transport

Working? Christmas shopping? Fewer trains running today.

Just a reminder that as noted last week, there are reduced train (and tram) timetables running from this week until Australia Day. For my fellow Bentleigh people, I’ve marked the weekday cancelled trains for you: Basically for us on the Frankston line, train frequencies are halved at most times of day on weekdays for the  ... [More]

Categories
transport

Holiday timetables – “Turn up and go” becomes “Turn up and wait”

Much has been made of Metro’s scheduled cancellations over the next two days to try and deal with extreme heat — in particular they’re citing speed restrictions on the faster part of the network, which will have speed restrictions. It’ll be interesting to see if they can stick to this plan, or if the whole  ... [More]

Categories
Consumerism

Deliveries

Definitely in the category of First World Problems… When you order something online… …and you get it sent to home rather than work because it’s a bit bulky… …and you aren’t home when they try to deliver it… …and they don’t take it to a Licenced Post Office which is open on weekends… …and they  ... [More]

Categories
transport

Public transport fare changes next year – will they have unintended consequences?

Most years there’s a public transport price rise. This year it’s a little more complicated – a number of other changes have been announced. The Budget Update delivered on Friday included some tweaks to the fare system. But they may have an unintended effect on patronage. Fare increases A number of changes will be made  ... [More]

Categories
transport

Train window ads – what about visibility?

I’m not against advertising on public transport. It brings in much-needed revenue and helps subsidise services. But it shouldn’t be intrusive. Bus and tram passengers have had to get used to ads on windows of vehicles over many years, but it’s only in the last couple of years that it’s become prominent on trains. It  ... [More]

Categories
transport

“People should be able to choose their mode of travel”

“RACV has a very clear view that people should be able to choose their mode of travel and not be confronted by artificial policy directions that constrain particular modes of travel… — RACV spokesman Dave Jones, Herald Sun 9/12/2013 Yes, it’d be awful if artificial policy directions prevented people choosing their travel mode. Policy directions  ... [More]

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Friends and loved ones News and events

#46664

The whole idea of state-sanctioned racism, treating non-whites as second-class citizens by law, seems ludicrous now, yet it lasted into the 1990s in South Africa. It was always a ludicrous concept, of course. No wonder The Goodies parodied it as “Apart-Height” in one of their episodes. As a kid growing up, there had often been  ... [More]

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Photos from ten years ago PTUA transport

Photos from December 2003

Continuing my series of ten year old photos… The Christmas tram in Flinders Street Grumpy Daniel Next, perhaps the most useless Melbourne public transport map ever produced. It doesn’t show the most well-known location, the CBD, and shows very few others. It also has numerous errors, including: Implies Sandringham is next to Clayton. Implies Glen  ... [More]