If you follow me on Twitter, you may have already seen this. A man rushed past on the stairs at Southern Cross. He ran down and around the corner, then doubled-back to the V/Line fare gates. My guess is he'd come from the Metro platforms. Here's a short video of what happened next. https://twitter.com/danielbowen/status/1159651864255668224 (It's only 18 seconds to play in full. You
This went super viral, at least by my standards. It started off as a reply to a Tweet from Tosh Greenslade (from Mad As Hell) - he pointed out a similar slogan, then I realised the BBQ Shapes box design is near identical to the livery on the trams. Someone suggested a look at the other modes... and it grew from there. https://twitter.com/danielbowen/status/1158848074367639552 On Twitte
You might recall I had put in a request to Vicroads to resolve a 13 year old problem with a local bus zone. The bus zone hours hadn't been updated since last decade. In 2006 the operating hours of bus route 701 were extended so it runs until after 9pm in the evening, and Sunday service was introduced for the first time. Vicroads replied and said they had passed the query to PTV. Then PT
Sorry PT fans, this is a blog about driving. I've had the new car, a 2017 Mitsubishi Lancer bought brand new, a year now, and have got to just on 10,000 kilometres so far. The average in Australia is about 15,000 km per year, but some drive a lot further. My past average is about 7-8K, but circumstances (principally one son who just got his licence) has us driving more than in the past.
Another in my series of photos from ten years ago. This month: July 2009. Then-metropolitan train operator Connex was advertising the addition of more station staff around the network. https://www.flickr.com/photos/danielbowen/48412280011/in/dateposted/ Frankston station. I think the construction was an upgrade to the bus interchange... which was all replaced again in 2018. http
You always spot more stuff on foot than you would when driving. On Saturday morning I walked over to the new 627 bus route and caught it up to Murrumbeena, before walking home via Carnegie, my old neighbourhood. The bus wasn't packed, but a few people were using it, including some boarding and alighting at stops along East Boundary Road, which didn't previously have any bus service. Not too
The new trains are expected to go into service later this year, 100 years after Melbourne's first electric trains started running. Their official name is the not-very-catchy High Capacity Metro Trains, or HCMTs for short. A friend's son suggested what I think is a far better name, given the anniversary: Centennial Trains. What do you think? https://www.flickr.com/photos/danielbowe
No time at the moment for any ambitious deep dive blog posts, so here's a slightly rambling follow-up to last week's Caulfield to City rail bustitution. For the entire week, I was lucky enough to avoid travelling in peak hours, but overall the feedback was that it was a lot smoother this time. There were delays of course - buses just can't do the job of trains - and footy fans in particular (w
I've been listening to the Transit Unplugged podcast for a while now on my (sometimes quite long) weekend walks. They typically interview CEOs and other senior managers from public transport systems in the USA, often small-to-medium sized operations. In recent weeks they've published a set of interviews with CEOs from much larger operations - and the reason this is of particular interest to
Just a quick one as I've been very busy, and have also had a bad cold, so haven't felt like much writing. The next lot of major bustitution is upon us from Saturday morning, and including all of next week: no trains between the City and Caulfield. You'll recall that at Easter, this was a complete mess. Have they learnt from that? Yes, I'm told they looked very closely at how it went, tho
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