The Null Device

Obama Replaces Costly High-Speed Rail Plan With High-Speed Bus Plan. The buses will cost a lot less than high-speed trains and will rocket arong highways at speeds up to 165mph.

(via Infrastructurist) ¶ humour infrastructure public transport the onion usa 0 Share

The latest city to get a bike-sharing programme is San Francisco. A scheme is being rolled out both within San Francisco and technological/research hubs like Mountain View and Palo Alto along the west side of the bay. The scheme will be fairly limited compared to London or Paris; the bikes in San Francisco will initially only be in the business centre around Market St., and won't cover areas like the Haight, Golden Gate Park or the Mission District, and there are no plans to extend the scheme to the east bay (Berkeley/Oakland and such).

I'm half surprised that Google, Facebook or some startup haven't rolled out their own bike-sharing system first, with intelligently mesh-networked, location-enhanced bikes which may or may not interact with the rider's advertising profile and/or online identity.

¶ bicyclism cycling public transport san francisco urban planning 6 Share

Dublin railway staff used CCTV footage and Twitter to locate the owners of a cat that had wandered onto a suburban train and disembarked in the city centre. The cat, who is named Lilou and commenced her journey at Malahide station (in the suburbs of Dublin) was issued with an electronic smart card to use should she wish to make any future journeys.

Lilou is by no means the first non-human public transport user on record, or even the first feline one.

¶ animals cats dublin ireland public transport 0 Share

Some culture-jammers in New York have affixed official-looking "Spoiler Alert" signs to LED train attival signs in the subway.

¶ culture jamming détournement nyc public transport society 3 Share

Planning a public transport system in Jerusalem, holy city of three major religions and bitterly contested territory, involves taking some controversial planning decisions:

Under pressure from the influential and growing ultra-orthodox community, some bus lines in Jerusalem have introduced segregation, with women confined to the rear of the vehicle.

The company earlier distributed a consumer survey asking Jerusalem residents if they were "bothered" that the light railway is to include stops in Arab neighbourhoods en route to connecting to Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem. Another question asked: "All passengers, Jews and Arabs, can enter the train freely, without undergoing a security check. Does this bother you?"

¶ gender israel jerusalem middle east public transport religion 0 Share

In Paris, fare evaders on the Métro have organised into outlaw insurance societies. The mutuelles des fraudeurs take a monthly fee of somewhere around 7 euros, and in turn offer to pay the fraudsters' fines, should they get caught. They also compile databases of fare-evading tips and encourage those who would otherwise be too timid.

Back in 2001 or so, he and a group of fellow travelers, in both the literal and metaphorical senses, formed the Network for the Abolition of Paid Transport, "the beginning of our struggle," Gildas calls it. The group's initials in French mimic those of the agency that runs the Metro and buses, and to the agency's logo, which looks like the outline of a face, abolitionists added a raised fist.

(It occurred to me that, were something like the mutuelles des fraudeurs to arise in the English-speaking world, it'd be couched in the language of free-market libertarianism rather than macaronic pseudo-socialism. Rather than attempting to sell a nebulous collective solidarity, it'd speak out to the individual in the language of self-improvement and competition, imploring them to be a winner and not a loser (like the chumps who pay full fare), and would defend itself as the invisible hand of the free market providing a service and/or striking a blow against socialism.)

¶ crime economics france leftwingers paris public transport stupidity 0 Share

And the first dividends of Transport For London's opening of its data to the public have started flowing in; a chap named Matthew Somerville has created a real-time map of trains on the London Underground, displayed on a Google Map. The source code is available here. Somerville also has a similar map for National Rail trains, though, due to the more limited data published by National Rail, it can only show trains due to arrive at one of several stations. (Let's hope that National Rail see the benefits of opening their data soon.)

(via MeFi) ¶ geodata london underground public transport visualisation 0 Share

Another horrible example of public transport privatisation gone wrong, this time from Auckland, where the efficiencies of the free market have produced a system that's expensive and inconvenient, and encouraged the public to drive:

City planners impose various pseudo-quantitative performance indicators on the contractors, such as sophisticated GPS systems to monitor on-time performance. But even this minimal nod to public accountability produces unintended consequences. Bus companies fear being fined for missing schedule targets, but are driven by the profit motive to ruthlessly minimize outlays on equipment and staff. The resulting pressure is intense on drivers (some of whom don’t even get paid overtime) to meet unrealistic timetables – a media exposé last year showed this often requires breaking the speed limit. Several times, we’ve watched an awaited bus race by without stopping, the driver shrugging helplessly and pointing at his watch.

Yet Aucklanders still pay for transit – three times over. Once through taxes – subsidies to private transit consume half of all property taxes collected by the regional government. Then again at the fare box. And finally a third time through inconvenience. No wonder Aucklanders take transit one-quarter as often as Torontonians.

(via Infrastructurist) ¶ canada fail neoliberalism new zealand privatisation public transport 1 Share

Some good news from London: Transport For London, who run the city's public transport networks, have announced that they will be opening access to all their data by the end of June. The data will include station locations, bus routes and timetable information, and will be free from restrictions for commercial or noncommercial use.

The data will be hosted at the London DataStore, a site set up to give the public access to data from public-sector organisations serving London. A few sets are already up, as well as a beta API which returns the locations of Tube trains heading for a specific station. Which could probably be worked into a mobile app to tell you when to start walking to the station. If they had something like this giving the positions and estimated arrival times of buses (whose travel times are considerably more chaotic than those of trains, and which often run less frequently, especially at night), that would be even more useful. (Some approximation of this facility exists in the LED displays, which are installed at some bus stops and sometimes are operational; a XML feed and a mobile web app would probably be a more cost-effective way of getting this information into the hands of commuters.)

Another thing that would be useful would be an API for the Transport for London Journey Planner; being able to ping a URL, passing an some postcodes or station names, a departure/arrival time and some other constraints, and get back, at your option, a maximum journey time or a list of suitable journeys, in XML or JSON format, would be useful in a lot of applications, from device- or application-specific front ends (i.e., a "take me home from here" mobile app) to ways of calculating the "inconvenience distance" between two points by counting travel time and changes (i.e.,in terms of travel convenience, Stratford is closer to Notting Hill than Stoke Newington, despite being further in geographical terms, as it's a straight trip on the Central Line).

¶ apis data data mining geodata london public transport tech uk web web services 0 Share

Citing falling sales in science fiction and fantasy, Charlie Stross unveils his new direction: supernatural romance novels about sparkly unicorns:

Harlequin Romance will publish my first paranormal romance, "Unicorn School™: The Sparkling", in Q1/2012. US:TS is the first book of the projected series, and introduces Avril Poisson, who moves with her family from Phoenix, Arizona, to Forks, Washington with her divorced father, and finds her life in danger when she falls in love with a Sparkly Unicorn™ called Bob. Stalked by and in fear of a mysterious horse-mutilator, Avril must practice her dressage skills with Bob and qualify her steed for a scholarship to the elite Unicorn School™, where he will be safe to grow (and sparkle) without fear of the vampires who infest the senior's common room.

The Brown team has been buoyed by focus group results suggesting that an outbreak of physical fighting during the campaign, preferably involving bloodshed and broken limbs, could re-engage an electorate increasingly apathetic about politics. They also hope they can exploit the so-called "Putin effect", and are said to be exploring opportunities for Brown to be photographed killing a wild animal, though advisers have recommended that weather, and other considerations, mean Brown should not remove his shirt.

¶ april fool's charlie stross london politics public transport uk unicorns 1 Share

A Russian ecologist has found that the fierce pressure of living in a hostile urban environment is causing Moscow's stray dogs to evolve increased intelligence, including abilities to negotiate the city's subway system:

Poyarkov has studied the dogs, which number about 35,000, for the last 30 years. Over that time, he observed the stray dog population lose the spotted coats, wagging tails, and friendliness that separate dogs from wolves, while at the same time evolving social structures and behaviors optimized to four ecological niches occupied by what Poyarkov calls guard dogs, scavengers, wild dogs, and beggars.

But beggar dogs have evolved the most specialized behavior. Relying on scraps of food from commuters, the beggar dogs can not only recognize which humans are most likely to give them something to eat, but have evolved to ride the subway. Using scents, and the ability to recognize the train conductor's names for different stops, they incorporate many stations into their territories.

Additionally, Poyarkov says the pack structure of the beggars reflects a reliance on brain over brawn for survival. In the beggar packs, the smartest dog, not the most physically dominant, occupies the alpha male position.

(via Infrastructurist) ¶ animals biology cats dogs evolution london moscow public transport russia 2 Share

In what appears to be a periodic ritual as formalised as a Japanese noh play, an academic has called for Melbourne to radically change its transport policies, scrapping freeway building programmes and instead divert billions of dollars to public transport:

''Please, we need a moratorium on all freeway building, until we have an adequate transport and land-use plan for Melbourne,'' Professor Low said yesterday.

Instead, the Government must commit to better managing the public transport system, via a metropolitan planning authority, Professor Low will tell the Melbourne @ 5 Million transport conference at Melbourne University today.

He compared Melbourne's expected population of 5 million people by 2026 to London's inner boroughs, which he said had a population of just over 7 million. ''Imagine London without the Underground,'' he said, ''because that is what Melbourne will be like at 5 million, unless we start building an efficient, integrated public transport system for this city.''

Of course, there are the pie-in-the-sky plans, often floated before an election, of gleaming new subway lines across the city, which, were they to actually be built, would soak up the public transport budget for a generation. (There simply isn't enough money coursing through the Australian economy to build a London-style Underground or Paris-style Metro.) Meanwhile, the "swinging voters" who decide elections live in outer suburbs, have one car per adult member of each household and want freeways to drive along. The quarter-acre suburban block is still the ideal, and any proposals to increase housing density are dismissed as absurd and somewhat distasteful. It will take severe increases in oil prices—ones severe enough to cause hardship, if not unrest—to bring about a change of policy. (And maybe not even that; I can imagine that it may be more politically plausible to see Melburnians driving cars fuelled by liquified coal, poisoning themselves with carcinogenic pollutants but keeping the sacred suburban lifestyle, than to see the expense and upheaval required for an effective public transport system.)

¶ melbourne public transport urban planning 1 Share

Sticker seen on the Tube:

I wish them luck in their endeavour; they'll certainly need it.

¶ british rail politics privatisation public transport thatcherism-blairism uk 0 Share

Think your privatised public transport service is shoddy? It could always be worse, like, say, the buses in Delhi, which are privately owned, with strong free-market incentives. Unfortunately, they're incentives to drive faster, overtaking the bus in front and grabbing potential passengers, whilst skimping on any avoidable maintenance, rather than providing a useful service:

While a city-run service would prioritize getting its citizens from A to B, a private driver is less focused on customer service than on overtaking the next bus down the road. After all, the faster he drives, the more competitors he passes, the more passengers he picks up, and the more money he makes.

Which is why the last thing a Blueline driver ever wants to do is come to a stop. Every move he makes is done with the intent of keeping the bus in motion: slowing just enough so debarking passengers can jump off, then picking up speed as the new passengers run alongside the bus, swinging themselves up and in as the conductor screams at them to hurry. And before the last passenger is fully aboard (sometimes pulled in by his fellow passengers), the driver is already shifting gears, spewing mocking black smoke at hapless would-be passengers still running after the bus, and bulldozing the bus back into traffic.

But with an estimated 2,200 Blueline buses careening across Delhi on any given day, it’s no wonder the newspaper reports are almost identical every day. After an accident, the driver tries to flee, an angry mob beats him, the police impound the bus, the driver is thrown in jail, the owner of the bus is not mentioned. Sometimes the driver escapes, in which case the mob finds its release in setting fire to the bus.

(via substitute) ¶ capitalism fail india public transport terriblisma 1 Share

Blog discovery of the day: The Infrastructurist, which focuses on issues such as transport and urban planning, from a largely, though not entirely, US-centric point of view, and has some interesting stories. Such as a LA Times piece on the Dubai model of urbanism, an Economist piece on the Obama administration's US$500bn transport bill (which includes 50 billion for high-speed rail), a Google Maps gallery of six intriguingly shaped communities, a piece on what to do when neo-Nazis decide to sponsor a US highway (the answer: rename it after a civil rights leader), and a gallery of grand railway stations in America, all now long-since demolished.

¶ dubai geodata politics public transport railway transport urban planning usa 0 Share

In the US, President Obama has announced plans to build high-speed railway systems. It won't be one national high-speed railway, but rather a pot of money and a series of proposed high-speed rail corridors (some of which already have planned projects, such as the Californian system which passed the ballot in the last election). There is only $8Bn to spend, and the "high speed" trains are cited at running at up to 240km/h (i.e., somewhat faster than a British Rail InterCity 125 on a straight stretch of track, but not quite up there with the Shinkansen), but it is a start.

His strategy envisions a network of short-haul and long-haul corridors of up to 600 miles, with trains capable of speeds of up to 150mph (240km/h).

He said: "Our highways are clogged with traffic, costing us $80 billion a year in lost productivity and wasted fuel.

"Our airports are choked with increased loads. We're at the mercy of fluctuating gas prices all too often," he said.

¶ barack obama public transport railway urban planning usa 2 Share

A few interesting engineering-related developments in the news today:

• There is a proposal to provide most or all of Europe's energy needs with solar collector farms in the Sahara, slashing the continent's carbon emissions dramatically.
• England's parliament has approved the Crossrail rail scheme; from 2017—in nine short years—London will have a fast east-west underground rail link, sort of like Paris's RER, going from Paddington, under Tottenham Court Road and Farringdon, and hitting Stratford and Canary Wharf.

¶ energy engineering environment europe public transport railway tech uk 0 Share

A nursing home in Düsseldolf has come up with a novel way of dealing with stray Alzheimer's patients; they set up a fake bus stop outside the home:

“It sounds funny,” said Old Lions Chairman Franz-Josef Goebel, “but it helps. Our members are 84 years-old on average. Their short-term memory hardly works at all, but the long-term memory is still active. They know the green and yellow bus sign and remember that waiting there means they will go home.” The result is that errant patients now wait for their trip home at the bus stop, before quickly forgetting why they were there in the first place.

(via Boing Boing) ¶ aging deception fake germany health public transport social engineering urban planning 1 Share

Apparently the UK and Scottish governments are in discussion on building a high-speed railway line from Scotland to England. The details of the line aren't known, though it'd be built to Eurostar specifications, and would connect London to Glasgow. It would take a decade or so to build, and prices costs start at £9bn.

Where in London it would terminate is another question; one high-speed rail proposal involves making Heathrow the national high-speed rail hub, with Eurostar trains and trains going elsewhere in Britain terminating there. Which sends the message that, if you're travelling from, say, Glasgow to the continent, you're going to be changing at Heathrow anyway, so you may as well fly; not exactly encouraging environmental responsibility. (Of course, this is assuming that flying remains affordable; if not, then siting a major rail terminus at a site with an airport and not much else is just stupid planning.)

(via Londonist) ¶ heathrow public transport railway scotland uk urban planning 2 Share

The mediæval Italian hilltop town of Perugia has inaugurated a new, incongruously futuristic, transport system: a light railway of pilotless, podlike cars, running from the valley to the centre of the old town:

Dubbed the "Mini Metro", the rail line, which starts from the valley floor, climbs for 3km, wiggles around ancient constructions and monuments, and drops visitors off in the historic centre where an unobstructed view of Assisi and the rolling countryside gleams in the distance. Total travel time? 11 minutes.

At first look, the sight of pilot-less metallic pods shuttling people up and down the hillside on an elevated track seems, to put it mildly, anachronistic. Call it Tron-meets-Dante in the Umbrian hills.

¶ italy perugia public transport railway urban planning 0 Share

Quelle surprise; it turns out that, after all, Boris Johnson's replacement of bendy buses with magical flying Routemasters, a key plank in his election campaign, might not actually happen.

Kulveer Ranger, Boris Johnson's director of transport policy, said that a design competition would be launched - but if no bid was good enough they would look again at the pledge.

He added that although Mr Johnson is very keen to bring in a new-style bus in place of bendy buses, they would not press ahead with the idea for the sake of it.

Mr Johnson made phasing out bendy buses a priority, initially saying new Routemasters would cost £8million to run with conductors. However, he later admitted the figure would be nearer £100million.

Petrolheads and Chelsea tractor drivers can rejoice, though, as the congestion charge looks set to be "reviewed" (i.e., cut back); the western extension looks set to be scrapped altogether. Jeremy Clarkson, however, will be disappointed that a £500/day congestion charge on bicycles is not on the agenda.

(via london-underground) ¶ boris johnson cars london politics public transport uk 0 Share

Good news: Britain is arguably entering the new age of the train, with more journeys having been made on the railways last year than in any year since 1946. Not so good news: Britain's railways are still barely adequate; John Major's ideologically-driven privatisation of British Railways has led to a situation where more taxpayers' money is being pumped into the railways than even in the bad old days of that Inefficient Socialist Monopoly, though fewer pounds actually making it through to improving the service (but rather going to the profits of various private enterprises at various levels and/or falling through the cracks of the various inefficiencies of the present arrangement, which in some ways looks to be cobbled together with duct tape and string). Meanwhile, passengers are paying more for their tickets than anywhere in continental Europe, whilst putting up with slower trains and often a lack of seats. Not surprisingly, most of the record-breaking rail journeys were fairly short ones, with people choosing to fly between cities (like, say, London and Manchester), in a way that they just don't do in France or Germany:

The problem is that Britain's railways are a public utility run as a profit-making enterprise, and thus a rather inefficient conduit for channelling taxpayers' funds into the coffers of private industry. It seems that there are two possible ways out of the current mess:

1. Continue regarding the railways as a public utility and undo a lot of privatisation. Either nationalise rail operators or have them provide a service to a non-profit rail company, under carefully controlled terms. All state subsidies (for keeping socially- and economically-useful though unprofitable services running) will go to the non-profit (let's call it British Rail 2.0), or:
2. Run the railways consistently as a profit-making enterprise, and restructure them to run at a profit. That would mean a new round of Beeching-style cuts, with most smaller lines being scrapped, and the service ultimately being cut down to something like American-style commuter rail, consisting largely of profitable shuttles between dormitory areas and economic centres, running mostly at commuting hours. This is the approach The Economist recommended last year.

¶ economics public transport railway thatcherism-blairism uk urban planning 0 Share

It is apparently possible to travel around England entirely by local bus, if one doesn't mind doing so at a leisurely pace. And here are the timetables for getting from Penzance to Berwick-upon-Tweed entirely on local buses; the journey takes six days.

Other than obsessive bus anoraks (of which there must be some), this may be of interest to thrifty pensioners, for whom local buses across England have just become entirely free. Though, judging by the comments, not everyone's happy with that:

These baby boomers really know how to look after themselves. Their war veteran parents over the last 20 years had to pay. Never heard them getting free national bus travel. And their kids had to get out big loans to go to University while they got full grants. The FREEBIE generation.
Jon, Northumberland

Misguided, that word "free"! Yes, the pensioners will get a nice free ride but everyone else will be forced to subsidise it via higher bus prices. Good PR for the government; everyone else however will suffer further price increases. The bus companies will not let us off the hook as they still have to pay for the services. Gordon Brown cheers
Richard Kendrick, Leeds

¶ baby boomers buses england public transport resentment society travel uk 0 Share

Ken Livingstone has promised, should he be reelected, to ban all traffic from Oxford Street and replace it with a tram line, turning the shopping thoroughfare into something like Melbourne's Bourke Street, presumably paved in red bricks and containing tramp-proof public seating and such. Unlike Bourke Street, the traffic ban will be absolute, with no exemption for taxis.

A pedestrianised Oxford St. could be a good thing, turning a congested thoroughfare into a genuine public space. On the other hand, bus routes which go through it would either be rerouted through adjacent streets (which are already quite busy) or chopped in two.

Meanwhile, Tory clown prince Boris Johnson has vowed that, should he be elected, he will allow motorbikes to use bus lanes, just as cyclists do. Finally the petrolheads have a candidate they can rely on, since Jeremy Clarkson (who proposed abolishing the congestion charge for cars but imposing a £500/day congestion charge on bicycles, on the grounds that they are a nuisance to decent motorists everywhere and the smug, politically-correct Guardian-reading vegan types who cycle are annoying) declined to run.

Alas, if Livingstone (who has done an OK job, when he's not being George Galloway Lite) doesn't get reelected, it looks like Johnson will get up, as the other candidates (Brian Paddick and Sian Berry) do not look like having a chance. And, if Johnson becomes Mayor of London, I wonder how long it'll take until the fun-loving buffoonery gives way to hardline tory policies.

(via londonconnections) ¶ boris johnson ken livingstone london politics public transport tories trams urban planning 0 Share

The world appears to be experiencing a subway building boom, with cities across the world building new underground urban railways, to alleviate traffic congestion or merely as a status symbol. Cities across the Middle East such as Dubai are investing in subways (in Dubai's case with both gender-segregated carriages and VIP carriages), provincial cities across Europe are putting them in, and even seemingly unlikely places such as Santo Domingo (of the Dominican Republic) and Mallorca (in the Balearic Islands) are putting them in. And, of course, China and India are going wild on subway building. Though, apparently, the United States is over subways:

Sure, Los Angeles and New York are adding modest extensions to their systems. And Phoenix is considering a subway. But Chicago's system is nearing collapse--still with no long-term consensus about how to save it. Cincinnati is fighting over what to do with deteriorating tunnels built in the 1920s, but abandoned for expressways. And subways aren't even a controversy in most American cities because they're a political nonstarter. Bonds, which need to float costs approaching $1 billion a mile, are simply off the table. And federal funds have slowed to a trickle. Besides, libertarians believe subways distort a city's natrual growth and gentrification. You need only look at what cars and expressways do to a city's "natural" growth and gentrification to give subways a second look. Yes, they're expensive. And they're usually worth it.

(via Wired News) ¶ economics public transport subway urban planning 1 Share

There is more support for an underground railway line in Melbourne, with public transport operators Metlink and Connex throwing their weight behind such a proposal. (Though, in the latter case, I wonder whether this isn't merely to serve as a distraction from the appalling state of the system as managed by them:)

The call comes after a drop in the number of cars travelling to the CBD. City of Melbourne figures show public transport is the preferred means of travel, accounting for 67 per cent of all journeys in 2006, compared with 36 per cent in 1999.

Professor Currie said he was amazed the Government was still examining new road tunnels to the city. "Public transport dominates access to the city and the biggest single problem we've got is that there's not enough capacity on our railways," he said.

Though I'm wondering if they didn't miss a trick by not having it go east from Melbourne University, under Fitzroy and Collingwood, interchanging with the Epping and Hurstbridge lines at Victoria Park, and emerging on the median of the Eastern Freeway, where it becomes the long-promised Doncaster line (immediately taking more cars off the road):

¶ melbourne public transport 2 Share

It seems to be the season for blue-sky speculation about new railway lines in Melbourne again; The Age has published vague details of a leaked state government report listing possible new and reopened railway lines:

Under the blueprint, tracks might connect Chadstone shopping centre to the Dandenong and Glen Waverley lines and trains could run to Rowville and Monash University.

Options also include a north-south rail tunnel from Melbourne University to Windsor and the Melbourne Airport rail link.

There's more in it, though; the authors speculate on the possibility of reopening lines including the Outer Circle line (from Fairfield to Oakleigh via Kew, Camberwell and Malvern East; this could perhaps end up being the Chadstone rail link mentioned), a railway line going to Monash University in Clayton, and reopening the truncated ends of existing lines, such as Lilydale to Healesville and Frankston to Mornington.

Mind you, the report doesn't discuss funding, and appears to be nothing more than a catalogue of rights-of-way along which it would be possible, should a need arise, to lay tracks and run rail services. Whether we'll ever see trains running cheerfully through the ruins of the VicRoads headquarters in Kew, or, for that matter, to Doncaster or Monash University, is an entirely different question.

¶ australia melbourne public transport 1 Share

First Google provided a search engine, then they started handing out gigabyte-sized webmail accounts and then gave the world zoomable maps, and now Google have created their own sophisticated mass transit system. The system is a workaround for the transport woes of the San Francisco Bay Area, with its Californian sprawl, various disjointed transport systems run by different municipalities and levels of government, and consequent commuting headaches. In typical Google fashion, it innovates the idea of mass transit. The buses run on biodiesel, are equipped with wireless internet access, and are tracked in real time, with commuters being notified by mobile phone of their positions, and routes are constantly being revised.

The shuttles, which carry up to 37 passengers each and display no sign suggesting they carry Googlers, have become a fixture of local freeways. They run 132 trips every day to some 40 pickup and drop-off locations in more than a dozen cities, crisscrossing six counties in the San Francisco Bay Area and logging some 4,400 miles.

At Google headquarters, a small team of transportation specialists monitors regional traffic patterns, maps out the residences of new hires and plots new routes -- sometimes as many as 10 in a three-month period -- to keep up with ever surging demand.

(via /.) ¶ google public transport san francisco 0 Share

Some commuters in Melbourne, frustrated with Connex' mismanagement of the railway network and the resulting decline in service quality and reliability, have called a one-day fare strike on the first of March. Commuters are being urged not to buy or validate tickets on this day.

¶ activism melbourne public transport 2 Share

Secret plans by the Victorian government to build a 15-kilometre underground railway line under Melbourne. The line would link North Melbourne and Caulfield, and take two of the sets of lines that currently go through the loop. It looks like the loop would be left servicing the Burnley and Clifton Hill lines, and possibly the Sandringham line, and Richmond and South Yarra stations would become a lot less busy, losing a few now redundant platforms.

Internal emails show the option favoured by the Department of Infrastructure was for a 15-kilometre underground rail line linking North Melbourne and Caulfield stations, which would include new subway stations at Royal Parade (intersection of Royal Parade and Flemington Road, servicing the University Of Melbourne), Melbourne Central (upgrade of existing station), Flinders Street (underground extension to the train station), and Domain (intersection of Domain and St Kilda roads).

If this scheme goes ahead, though, it looks quite plausible to extend it to the Doncaster line. Given that it goes from North Melbourne station to the corner of Royal Parade and Flemington Road and then down Swanston Street, it would execute a pretty tight S-shaped turn under North Melbourne, and be heading east at Royal Parade. Thence, it would be fairly simple to have a branch line going straight east, under Carlton (possibly with a station on Lygon Street), Fitzroy (with a possible station near Brunswick or Smith Street) and Collingwood, before emerging right in the middle of the freeway. Whether any government would stump up the money (especially when car-dependent swinging electorates want more freeways and cheaper petrol) is another question.

Meanwhile, British transport consultant Sir Rod Eddington, who has been contracted to do a study on Melbourne's transport needs, has said that Melbourne's transport system is still "a work in progress". Then again, couldn't the same thing be said about London's (at least by Ken Livingstone)?

¶ melbourne public transport train underground 4 Share