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
Here (just a few hours late) is another in my series of ten year old photos: this time, it's June 2009. Already the subject of a blog post, was this confusing ad on the side of a bus. Does it mean it's flexible or not? https://www.flickr.com/photos/danielbowen/3588323009/ Don't you wish you were not packed into a train on your commute, but instead on your own private train somewhere? I
Last week's two whirlwind trips to Brisbane were busy with family business, but there was a chance for a few quick transporty observations. Tourists see signs for "stations" and might assume they're all railway stations. Nope, some of them are busway stations - they just look similar from the outside! https://www.flickr.com/photos/danielbowen/48140057386/in/photostream/ https://www.fl
In the past week, I've flown to Brisbane and back twice. My Uncle Frank got very sick. My sister, my cousin and I are his closest relatives, and we all live interstate. Thankfully we were able to go and see him. He passed away on Sunday morning. It was peaceful in the end, but it was still a shock. You may have noticed I've been pretty quiet this week.It's because my uncle passed
A follow-up to last week's post mapping out the number of train services per station. Commenter Andrew suggested I compare it against patronage - happily I'd been working on this anyway! Here it is - and as a bonus I've got hold of 2017-18 station patronage data. The darker the blue, the higher the boardings per service. Click on a station to see the numbers. What's interesting is
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