Category: transport

Hideous concrete “bollards” are being distributed around central Melbourne, in an effort to prevent terrorist attacks with motor vehicles such as those seen in Europe.

#Melbourne has hundreds of concrete bollards placed around the city. My toon @theheraldsun #terrorism pic.twitter.com/dtmx35DV8Y

— Mark Knight (@Knightcartoons) June 24, 2017

Everyone knows they’re hideous. But they’re also temporary.

More concrete barriers around city today. Temporary only, but necessary as advised by @VictoriaPolice. Permanent solution w be more elegant!

— Robert Doyle (@LordMayorMelb) June 22, 2017

This is fortunate, because the design means that although they can be used for sitting on, they also partly block pedestrians where they are located.

In some spots they roughly halve the capacity, making it quite difficult for an able-bodied person like me to walk between them when it’s busy. It must be doubly difficult with a pram or mobility device.

Obviously they’ve been installed in a hurry. In order to physically stop vehicles, but not involve complicated footpath works to embed a smaller bollard in the ground, they’ve just plonked huge concrete blocks around the place.

They could paint them of course, but I wonder if there’d be all this fuss if they weren’t so fugly?

It’s not as if Melbourne has a shortage of bollards already.

I’m not one to judge what type of vehicle they are capable of stopping, but here’s a sample from a walk around the CBD:

Tram terminus opposite Flinders Street Station

Flinders Street Station

These bollards protect the tram stop in Bourke Street, and similar ones are in place next to numerous similar tram stops

Bourke Street, near William Street. These seem to be removable, and look and feel pretty rickety.

New Chancery Lane, next to RACV

Little Collins Street (ooh look, another 8-Bit burger restaurant is coming!)

Little Bourke Street

These have been around Flagstaff Station for many years, but are actually intended to protect the surrounding Federal and Family Court buildings. (The Family Court was attacked with a vehicle when it was located in Bourke Street)

Little Collins and Queen Streets. I have no idea why this one had a glass on top of it, but presumably the bollard placement is intended to prevent turning vehicles overhanging the footpath where pedestrians may be waiting.

Thankfully not pedestrian areas in the CBD have fencing. This obviously blocks pedestrians as well as vehicles.

As I wrote after the January Bourke Street attack, if we’re serious about preventing motorists endangering or blocking pedestrians, not just maliciously but also via carelessness or thoughtlessness, then well-designed barriers which stop vehicles without barricading pedestrians are something to be welcomed.

Update Wednesday:

#Melbourne's bollard revolution begins. Someone has carefully measured this concrete abomination & lovingly sewn it a fabric cover #bollards pic.twitter.com/E0xth0ciqo

— Hannah Francis (@han_francisco) June 28, 2017

It turns out some are floating the idea of the Swanston/Flinders Street intersection being converted to a pedestrian scramble crossing (aka a Barnes Dance/Barnes Walk).

THE CBD’s busiest intersection, at Flinders and Swanston streets, could get a pedestrian-friendly makeover under changes forced by the Metro Rail tunnel project.

Lord Mayor Robert Doyle has revealed one option Melbourne city council is considering is the introduction of a traffic light sequence in which pedestrians can cross the whole of the intersection from different directions.

— Herald Sun: Metro tunnel forces rethink of pedestrian crossing at Flinders and Swanston streets (pay wall)

The only scramble crossing at present in the CBD is at Elizabeth/Flinders Street. It works well when cars stay out of it during the pedestrian phase.

What is a Pedestrian Scramble/Barnes Dance? This is. Not suited to everywhere, but can work well.🚶🚦 pic.twitter.com/LmANc6msNs

— Daniel Bowen (@danielbowen) June 13, 2017

Bourke/Spencer is probably the top candidate elsewhere in the CBD. Swanston/Latrobe could also work well.

As for Swanston/Flinders, potentially it could work, though the best locations for them are where there are lots of pedestrians in all directions.

At this intersection, most of the traffic is north-south from the station to the shops on the western side of Swanston Street. There are also heavy flows between the station and Federation Square and the tram stop, but this is well south of the intersection — though there is a case for moving the tram stop (and enlarging it) to be closer to the intersection, for better interchange with trams on Flinders Street.

There might be other, easier alternatives, but whether a scramble crossing works or not probably depends on the design of the traffic light cycles. If they minimise green time for cars, and maximise it for pedestrians, as well as having more spots in the cycle to let trams through, then it’s got potential to improve things.

Indeed, issues around the Federation Square tram stop are a reminder of the importance (alluded to in the Herald Sun article) that we need to think big picture.

What are the effects the metro tunnel will have on pedestrian movements? (It’s likely to provide underground walkways from the current station to the new one.) What about trams along Flinders Street, set to increase with some Elizabeth Street trams running to East Melbourne? And could/should there be a move to reduce or even eliminate private vehicles from Princes Bridge and this section of Flinders Street?

There are safety benefits to scramble crossings — accidents from turning cars reduce, though this is less important at this particular location where there are virtually no turning movements at the same time as walk signals.

And I do think there’s another important benefit to scramble crossings: on a psychological level, they improve the walking environment. Giving the entire space to pedestrians, even if only once each traffic light cycle, sends the message that (here at least) pedestrians are not, and should not be marginalised.

We all remember the East West Link. Specifically denied by the Coalition during the 2010 election, after a policy turnaround, they ignored the unfavourable economics of the project, and rammed through the contracts without a mandate, ahead of the 2014 election.

The design ran a motorway through the middle of Royal Park, and required demolition of dozens of homes in Collingwood. Community pressure resulted in Labor deciding to oppose the project and undo the contracts if elected — and they did it, at a cost of $780 million, but saving $4 billion of taxpayer funds, plus billions more in motorist tolls.

The Westgate Tunnel project wasn’t mentioned by Labor in the 2014 election — instead they proposed a smaller “Westgate Distributor” which would have moved trucks out of inner-west local streets by giving them dedicated ramps off the Westgate Freeway, and some arterial road upgrades.

The far bigger project now upon us was thought up by Transurban, operators of Citylink. A huge amount of detail about the project has just been released.

Some brief notes so far:

This project is huge, but in many ways less evil than East West Link. Thanks largely to an accident of geography, it mostly avoids parkland impacts (Lynch Road Reserve in Brooklyn is the notable exception – 34% acquired permanently), and it doesn’t require the acquisition of homes (though some living nearby would like to be bought out).

I suspect few people look fondly upon Footscray Road. It’ll be covered by an elevated road, with an oddly enclosed bike path in the middle. The transition between the tunnel and this new skyroad will be a portal next to the Maribyrnong River at Yarraville.

All of this might be forgivable if it was purely to get freight in and out of the port. But the city end of the project is clearly aimed at private motor cars — probably because in terms of tolls, that’s where the money is. Remember, Transurban proposed this project.

What the Westgate Tunnel does do that EWL didn’t is have a massive spaghetti junction that trashes the proposed E-Gate urban development, and also vastly increases the motorway capacity going into the CBD, which is inevitably going to result in the flooding of the northwest CBD and Docklands with traffic.

How much traffic? The EES claims most of it will hit North Melbourne, with up to 9000 extra cars per day along Dynon Road, 5000 in Hawke Street, 3000 in parts of Victoria Street, and 9000 along parts of Wurundjeri Way. It also claims traffic on some routes will reduce.

Can we trust the figures? It claims traffic along Spencer Street and the Bolte Bridge will drop, presumably because people heading from the south-western suburbs into the north side of the CBD and North Melbourne are expected to use the Westgate Tunnel. But if that’s the case, why don’t they use the Bolte Bridge now?

I need to read a bit more on the methodology behind the predictions, but it strikes me that claims of congestion relief on roads nearby to new motorways sometimes are correct in the short term, but don’t last, because they fill up again within a few years. For instance the Monash Freeway built in 1988 was meant to relieve Waverley Road and High Street, but didn’t.

Similarly, Citylink’s time-saving claims were very short-lived thanks to induced traffic.

Feeding the new tunnel will be a widened Westgate Freeway – if I’m counting it right, up to 17 lanes (9 inbound, 8 outbound) in sections, only tempered by the tolls incurred if people choose the new tunnel rather than the existing bridge.

In fact, the plan to massively increase the capacity feeding into the Westgate bridge+tunnel combo should put paid to the idea that this is providing an “alternative” to the bridge. If there’s a problem on the bridge in peak hour, clearly the tunnel won’t be able to relieve it because it’ll be full of its own traffic.

Westgate Freeway at Millers Road

Maribyrnong River/Yarraville Gardens

E-Gate

Docklands

The politics of it

Labor says they’ll have contracts ready for signing straight after the 2018 election, avoiding claims that they will force it through and built it without a mandate as the Coalition planned to do with East West Link.

Edit: Silly me, this is completely wrong. Labor are pushing ahead with this. It’s not subject to the next election. I’ve confused it with the NE Link.

The Greens are opposed to the project.

What will the Coalition do? Shadow Treasurer Michael O’Brien has said it’s an “absolute dud”. “We don’t support extra tolls on CityLink users – certainly not to pay for a dud project. And the more Victorians see of this Western Distributor the more the numbers just don’t add up.”

Does that mean they’ll go into the election pledging not to build it? Edit: Will they want to can the contracts? Probably unlikely, as it’ll be too far gone.

So will a vote in 2018 make any difference? Probably not.

Gosh, look at all those cars stuck in the traffic, blocking trucks. Almost a full train carriage worth of people. pic.twitter.com/DhvEXigUtt

— Daniel Bowen (@danielbowen) January 22, 2014

What do we want in our city?

As I’ve said before, transport is supply-led. If you want lots more people driving, massively increase motorway capacity, and it’ll happen. This is what the west has to look forward to.

Meanwhile the trains are packed (even on Sunday mornings when they only run every 40 minutes) and the local buses are a real mixed bag, often infrequent and caught in traffic – which on local roads is likely to get worse as they will feed into this new motorway capacity being built.

Western lines: trains every 40 mins on Sunday mornings, even when the Show is on. #SpringSt #metrotrains pic.twitter.com/Dx04H2e8W7

— Daniel Bowen (@danielbowen) September 28, 2014

Ultimately, if built (and it appears it probably will be), this project is likely fundamentally change the north-western end of the City, and skew the transport “options” of those along the Westgate corridor towards cars for decades to come.

• Thousands of pages of EES documents are available here
• but you’ve only got until 10th of July to read it all and make a submission!
• The Greens are attempting to read through it all and summarise for the benefit of those who don’t have time to read it all but want to make a submission.

Those of you who follow me on Twitter might recall I spent a lot of July last year posting about the 5 weeks of bus replacements on the Frankston line.

One of the things they got right was to run the buses along the main roads, rather than diverting them into the railway stations, three of which were major construction zones at the time.

Most buses ran along Grange and Jasper Roads, where rail replacement bus stops were installed. Their precise placement wasn’t ideal from a passenger point of view — they were sometimes a couple of hundred metres from the cross street that linked the road to the station — but overall it wasn’t too bad, and there was some logic to (where possible) re-using existing bus stops and shelters.

Overall it wasn’t perfect, there was crowding at times and long waits at others. But replacing a busy train line with buses isn’t an easy task, and we survived (though many sought out alternatives).

This seems a bit defensive for saying that #bustitution will use the regular bus stops.
Also: not via main road anymore? Too efficient? 🚌🚇 pic.twitter.com/HkpWlj5c9W

— Daniel Bowen (@danielbowen) March 8, 2017

With those three level crossing removals more-or-less completed (2 of 3 bike cages still aren’t operating), earlier this year they decided to put the replacement bus stops back at the stations, restoring the old zig zag route from Caulfield to Moorabbin. Not that it’s regularly used; it comes into play if the line is suspended or there is planned maintenance (since the crossing projects were completed, none that I can recall).

But this zig zag route has problems. I saw it in action a few weeks ago, when an incident at the pedestrian crossing between Glenhuntly and Ormond caused train services to be suspended from about 8pm until the last service.

The buses diverted onto side streets to serve Glenhuntly, went past the accident site (!), then to Ormond, back to the main road, then off again to McKinnon and Bentleigh, then oddly back to the main road for a stop there in lieu of Patterson.

It’s odd that they didn’t detour to Patterson. There is still old signage around that indicates rail buses used to make a detour. Maybe they want to make absolutely sure the buses stay away from the low bridge?

With all that zig zagging, the end result is the bus took 27 minutes to travel 9.4 kilometres, or an average speed of 21 kilometres per hour. And this was at 10pm at night, with virtually no other road traffic along most of the route. No congestion, and little or no wait to turn from side streets into main roads.

(Map courtesy of Michael)

In contrast, the train normally takes 12 minutes. The parallel 822 bus, with far more stops than the train replacement bus, takes 18 minutes — and that’s with a detour through some of East Bentleigh’s back streets!

Why Direct is better

Usually overall faster for passengers, even those going to/from the stations without train service. A 5 minute walk from a direct route is quicker than buses winding in and out of side streets to get to the stations.

Always faster for through passengers not using those stations

Bus drivers unfamiliar with area are more likely to be able to find their way

Easier for buses to navigate main roads. Smaller side streets may be physically difficult to turn in and out of, and may cause delays due to waiting for other traffic to turn

Reduces the need to run separate express and stopping buses

Because it’s quicker, the buses can run more often with the same fleet. This is particularly important in the time when buses are being organised, when resources may be thin on the ground.

Why Zig zag is better

Stops are close to stations, fairer for most passengers. Main road bus stops may be a long distance from stations

Easier to find the temporary bus stop from station, as it’s nearby and familiar

Supporting services like staff, toilets, maps, ticket machines, PSOs (after 6pm) are at the station

So which is better?

What other factors have I missed?

During level crossing works, taxis were also available for those who couldn’t walk to the replacement bus stops or easily use the buses.

And in some scenarios, some buses (for through passengers) can connect from other lines rather than running parallel to the railway line.

Between Caulfield and Moorabbin, the logical main road route is close to the stations, about five minutes walk for most people. On this line, I’d probably say it makes more sense to use it for replacement buses than the zig zag route.

On other sections of this and other lines, that may not be the case. But I don’t think rigidly zig zagging along a route to stop outside each station in every case (except Patterson?!) is necessarily the best outcome for passengers.

• This ABC story from November is worth a read: Where do train replacement buses come from?