Bentleigh area peeps: the steam train is back tomorrow (Saturday 25th November)! Steam trains this Saturday: Caulfield, Ormond, Mckinnon, Bentleigh, Moorabbin. ? pic.twitter.com/fHTqBE4RrE — Daniel Bowen (@danielbowen) November 22, 2017 Meanwhile, here’s another of my sets of ten year old photos, this time from November 2007. The month started with a quick trip to Adelaide. ... [More]
Year: 2017
Categories
Is it time to buy a Yearly Myki fare?
Generally every January, public transport fares in Victoria go up. This year it’s expected to be a 4.3% rise — this is CPI of 1.8% 2.8% (for the year to September), plus a 2.5% 1.5% rise that was first announced by the Coalition in December 2013, to be implemented in January 2015-2018, and dutifully followed ... [More]
In a plan that takes the popular level crossing removal program but flips it on its head, the State Coalition have announced they will grade-separate 55 road intersections around Melbourne if elected in 2018. (Reports: ABC / Age / Herald Sun) Here’s an animation created by the Coalition: And here’s the list of intersections announced ... [More]
I described this on Twitter the other day, but I’ll expand on it here. I was heading out in the car on Saturday afternoon. Got in, beeped, looked behind me, slowly backed-out of my driveway. BANG! A cyclist riding along the footpath with his dog (roughly at running pace) collided with my car. I stopped, ... [More]
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ATMs are free – but not all of them
Believe it or not, sometimes I blog about things other than transport. If you want to look purely at transport posts, try this link. Commonwealth Bank (CBA) announced on 24th September that all their ATMs were free for use by customers of any Australian bank. The same day, the rest of the Big 4 scrambled, ... [More]
Southland station is almost here — it’s scheduled to open on November 26th. At last! The centre has been getting ready Importantly, a more direct pedestrian path, including zebra crossings, has been provided from the centre entrance to the railway station. Bravo! Wayfinding signage inside the centre already points the way to the station. Paid ... [More]
All of Melbourne’s suburban railway stations have step-free access to the platforms. Except one: Heyington. To get to either platform involves steps. Heyington is set into the side of a hill. From the street you go down some steps to the citybound (“up”) platform. Or if you want the outbound (“down”) platform, that’s down some ... [More]
ZOMG, for the first time since I started this series, I forgot to post photos for October 2007 in October. And nobody noticed. Not surprising; I suspect I’m the most amused by these. Here they are. First, here’s the classic pic of Flinders Street Station. Basically the same nowadays, but covered in scaffolding for the ... [More]
I ran a Twitter thread over the last fortnight, highlighting some of the ways that footpath space is misused, or mis-allocated. This blog expands on those posts. In some of these cases, capacity constraints are causing problems for large numbers of pedestrians. Able-bodied people are often able to avoid those hazards, though it does slow ... [More]
Categories
A tale of two Bentleighs
Census data for Journey To Work was released on Monday, and many are taking a good look at the results. In Greater Melbourne, overall about 16.3% of people are using public transport to get to work — up from 14.5% in 2011. (It actually depends how you define “Melbourne”, and how you analyse the figures. ... [More]
If they want to encourage people to walk, they should at least ensure it’s as easy as possible. But in many cases, traffic lights are programmed to make it difficult – even where fixing it wouldn’t disadvantage motorists at all. Example 1 Here’s the T-junction at Centre Road and Eskay Road, Oakleigh South. I’m walking ... [More]
One of the things I found fascinating about Brussels on our recent holiday was – in contrast to Cardiff – how they’ve gone out of their way to make life easy for pedestrians. Most striking was that there were zebra crossings. Lots and lots of zebra crossings. When I first spotted how many there were, ... [More]