It’s the end of the year, so I’m going to clear out some blog drafts, snippets of writing, going back a bit over a year. The Great Australian Transport Dream If the Great Australian Dream is home ownership, preferably a quarter-acre block with a huge backyard, then the Great Australian Transport Dream might be free-flowing ... [More]
Month: December 2018
My regular post of ten year old photos… The smiley in the sky (first posted here) Tram of the beast (First posted here) The next station is Connex Back when the trams were battleship grey, and they used obscure route numbers like 47. In December 2008 a brand new bike parking cage was under construction ... [More]
Last year I wrote about Chadstone’s Boxing Day bus debacle: delays, heavy demand, traffic jams, queues, and not a single additional bus deployed. So, how was it this year? Spoiler: Almost the same. Here’s some video, or read on. So I wanted to head to Chadstone to look for a bargain. It’d be crazy to ... [More]
One final blog before Christmas. PTV published this data some time ago, covering Melbourne’s train/tram/bus patronage from 1947 to 2011, but I’ve added the most recent figures using numbers from the Budget Papers. The data starts just after WW2, with the highest number of trips shown being 587 million in 1948-49. There was a big ... [More]
A quick skim of the Annual reports
State government annual reports season ended up hitting late this year due to the election. It’s usually in September, but this year everything got tabled in Parliament late on Wednesday. I usually like to browse through the V/Line and PTV reports for interesting factoids… Here are some things I noticed during a quick skim. V/Line ... [More]
The Age’s Timna Jacks got hold of some bus punctuality figures via FOI, and published this story last week, which is worth a read: Late every second trip: Life on the delayed 232 bus The data provides a glimpse of something not normally in the public eye. Regular bus users know that some routes suffer ... [More]
As expected, public transport fares in Victoria go up from 1st January. This time it’s a CPI rise of 2.2% – thankfully not as high as the last four which were CPI+2.5% (budgeted by the Coalition in 2014, delivered by Labor). This takes the standard zone 1 or 1+2 daily fare to $8.80, and the ... [More]
Desire lines are where authorities intend for people to go one way, but people (especially pedestrians) quite logically ignore them and go a different way. Often they indicate poor design. Here are some quick examples from my neck of the woods. You have to wonder whose bright idea this was. Try and divert the pedestrians ... [More]
Renaming North Melbourne
It’s perhaps a minor thing, but… Back in November 2017 the metro tunnel station names were announced, including a new station called North Melbourne, with the current station to be renamed to West Melbourne. (See update at bottom of article. This plan was cancelled in early 2020.) I don’t have a problem with that. It’s ... [More]