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Photos from ten years ago

Old photos from February 2008

Ten years ago I was surviving (somehow) with no hot water, after the water heater packed-up. The solar system I had installed to replace it is, thankfully, still going nicely. Anyway, it’s the last day of Feb – just time for some old photos from ten years ago – another in my series of rehashed  ... [More]

Categories
transport

How many motorways does a big city need? And what sort of city do we want?

On Friday, The Age reported that Infrastructure Australia has put out a report that asks what sort of city we’d like to have in 2046: The Expanded Low Density scenario – similar to Los Angeles – sprawling, dispersed suburbs, even more car-dominated than today The Centralised High Density scenario – similar to New York City  ... [More]

Categories
transport

Crosstown traffic / Bacchus Marsh stopover

All of us have data being captured about us all the time. For many of us that includes Myki travel data (though even that is tiny compared to the myriad of information captured by our smartphones). Mostly for me it’s the drudgery of everyday work commuting, but every so often there’s something of interest. Crosstown  ... [More]

Categories
transport

What’s the population of a city?

Definitions can be important when looking at things such as statistics. A simple comparison of city populations can result in quite different figures. For example, what is the population of Seattle? The Wikipedia article opens: Seattle is a seaport city on the west coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County,  ... [More]

Categories
transport

Noble Park station and the first section of skyrail is open

For two weeks the Cranbourne/Pakenham line was shut between Westall and Dandenong, allowing construction crews to complete the ramps and connect the first section of skyrail to the line. It re-opened on Thursday. I and other stakeholders got a preview on Wednesday, but we weren’t allowed to take photos inside (because construction work around the  ... [More]

Categories
transport

Short local history lessons, in 280 characters (or less)

A year ago today, I travelled to Pinewood shopping centre in Mount Waverley for the second time that month. The first visit (where I blogged my trip home) was for a medical consultation for a lump in my arm. The second visit was to have it removed. I travelled to the appointment, and as I  ... [More]

Categories
transport

What is Metro 2?

If you live in Melbourne, you’ve almost certainly heard of the Melbourne Metro Rail Tunnel project (MMRT for short, but to avoid confusion here, I’ll call it Metro 1). You may or may not have also heard of the Metro 2 project. So what is it? It used to be the second stage of Metro  ... [More]

Categories
Toxic Custard newsletter transport

Transport is supply-led

One of the fundamental problems with transport planning in Australia is that politicians see it as demand-led, when basically transport systems are supply-led. Demand-led thinking has them looking at congested roads and thinking “we need to build another one”. Another one gets built, and it fills up. Rinse and repeat. (More people in cars =  ... [More]

Categories
transport

Peace and quiet on the bus

A mate of mine told me this funny story, which I posted to Twitter yesterday. Here’s a version with fewer emoji, and a bit more detail. He was on a bus heading out to Doncaster. Two young men got on, full of attitude. They sat in the back, and started playing music through a Bluetooth  ... [More]