Why is it that at most traffic lights, the crossings for pedestrians are so narrow? Even in Melbourne's CBD, where heavy pedestrian numbers are expected, most crossings are far too narrow for the number of people. It appears that technically, anybody crossing outside the lines is in breach of Road Safety Rule regulation 234 (a) - which says you can't cross a road less than 20 metres fro
Last week the government announced timetable changes, including adjustments to the Cranbourne/Pakenham line. (I'll just call it the Dandenong line for short. Almost everybody else does.) Of the roughly 265 services per weekday, 93 will be adjusted. A few will be quicker by a minute or two, but most of the 93 will be slower - most of them by 1-2 minutes, but a few by up to 5 minutes. During
Update - see below At busy times, queues can form at station fare gates, especially when large numbers of people arrive from multiple trains at once. Investment in more gates and faster (Vix) readers has helped - 950 new readers are being installed in 141 stations. But it's noticeable than some people wait for the person in front of them to go through and for the gate to close before tou
It's not your imagination. Some City Loop escalators are running slower in peak hour. Normally: Fast in peak, slow off-peak Normal practice (for decades now) is to run the Loop station escalators at a reasonable clip during peak hour, and set to slow down outside peak. This is pretty annoying for many of those catching trains at off-peak times. Why slow them down outside peak? It's not c
One of the gaping holes in Melbourne's public transport system is the lack of an all-day every day frequent service on the backbone: the Metro suburban train network. Melbourne is one of the few cities in the world, outside North America, which doesn't have frequent all day trains. Other Australian cities are moving towards this. Perth has now trains every 15 minutes to most stations until
A Metro (MTM) proposal has emerged for big changes to the operation of the City Loop for trains running through the Caulfield and Burnley tunnels. The page below is from a document discussing CBD station capacity implications from the introduction of the High Capacity Metro Trains. I'm told the document is genuine. It reveals that the Caulfield Loop will be required to run anti-clockwise al
This is part two of my ten year old photos from September 2009. At the time, Myki had been launched in regional cities, and was about to start in Melbourne. Ahead of the wider rollout, I got to look around the Myki test centre, which was fascinating. Around the place were lots of test cards and computers and other hardware https://www.flickr.com/photos/danielbowen/48836573347/in/phot
My car has a spot in the central console area thingy that looks like it has been designed to store your mobile phone so you can kind of see the screen while driving, for navigational purposes. At least, the manual doesn't seem to document its purpose, and I can't figure out what else it could be for. A few months ago I had to drive to Balwyn to pick up a batch of stuff to bring home. My naviga
It's well known that the Free Tram Zone worsened CBD tram crowding, but the package of fare reforms implemented in 2015 (planned by the Napthine government, matched by Labor) also capped zone 1+2 fares at zone 1 prices. This removed a long-time bugbear in the fare system: the huge jump from going over the zone boundary. New statistics show the effects. Herald Sun today: Fare change driving
It's a miracle! Back in 2011, the train information on this Smartbus sign at Bentleigh station was switched off. In 2016 during the level crossing removal project, the bus stop and sign were removed, then put back. For a while the sign wasn't working, but then the bus times were switched on. But not the train times. On Monday, for the first time in over 8 years, the train times re-app
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