jeremy.id.au

This time five years ago (17/12/2002), the following letter appeared in The Age newspaper, the author being myself. It is interesting to note that although not a great deal has changed since then (a lot of Melbourne’s public transport is still fairly limited to the hours of 9am to 5pm), they have finally ditched the Summer holiday timetable for the train network. Well hoorah for that, though hopefully they fix the many other problems. Also buses and trams will still run to a limited timetable. The only logical reason for this would be that the operators can’t resist the pressure of drivers seeking to take holiday leave. It’s not like people go out less, just because they’re on holidays. Although public transport workers certainly deserve holidays like the rest of us, their holidays should be staggered so that the system remains functional.

It’s 2002, minister

The comments made by state Transport Minister Peter Batchelor’s spokesman regarding summer holiday timetables (The Age, 14/12) are astounding and lack common sense. The 21st-century lifestyles that people live are not restricted to the hours of 9am to 5pm Monday to Friday and four-week holidays over Christmas-New Year. Furthermore, people no longer go to bed at 8pm and those who do take time off don’t stay home all the time.

The government obviously thinks we are still living in the 1950s. Public transport needs to provide a uniformly high level of service to ensure everyone is catered for.
Jeremy Lunn, Box Hill

Well okay, I didn’t actually get lost. However, Canberra’s bus network is not at all visitor friendly; perhaps not even all that friendly to its regular users. I was originally going to cycle though the bike provided to me by my host was not quite up to scratch. Couldn’t get the saddle up so wouldn’t have been much fun when it came time to climb back up the hills of Belconnen. No problem though, I was happy to experiment with the buses.

So my first morning there, having arrived the previous afternoon (and had a bit of a look around the city without actually going into any attractions). Having failed with the bike, I found I had just missed the hourly bus servicing the suburb of Aranda. Knowing that the frequent buses run along Belconnen Way, I thought I’d walk up that way. Though it wasn’t another 300 metres around the corner that I actually found a bus stop outside a hospital. However, I then made the mistake of not transferring to another bus at the city interchange to get to Parliament House. Although there is a stop within walkable distance, I was hoping for another stop that was closer. Instead, the bus took me all the way out to Woden out in the suburbs of Canberra. I finally took a bus back to the city and then out to Parliament House (both old and new).

Day three and I finally had everything under control. I figured out that bus stops are indicated as white dots on the bus maps, of which knowing this made quite a difference (though didn’t make up for bus stops being quite sparse in some areas). I managed to get out to the High Court and the National Gallery of Australia before taking a bus back to the other side of the lake to get a ferry. Timing was all good until I decided I wanted to go to the War Memorial, only that I had just missed the early bus to there. Constitutional Ave goes close enough though the buses for this are dispersed all over the city interchange. Finally I asked the information people who gave me the time and bus bay for the next bus along this road fairly quickly. Visited the war memorial then when it was time to get back, it was not clear where the closer bus stopped. Missed the bus before I realised which stop it was leaving from, so had to walk the 10 minutes back down to Constitutional Ave again.

The final day I didn’t use any buses. Instead I walked up Black Mountain to the Telecom Tower, passing a wallaby on the way up. While at the top of the tower, I fielded a phone call from a journalist at a local paper back home about our own public transport woes. I gave Canberra one last look over, before making the descent back down to Aranda, where I saw an Echidna when I was almost near the bottom.

Left Canberra by train, headed for Sydney. The trip was actually far more scenic than I had expected with plenty of bush and deep cuttings through the rock. Takes a bit longer than by bus, though trains tend to be far more comfortable with more leg room, etc.

Photos of Canberra to come.

With only half a day left, it’s been an interesting election and in some ways, an entertaining one to watch as well. While Labo[u]r messed up on their Transport & Liveability Statement, they’ve cunningly kept a low profile on transport during the election campaign. Not that this is necessarily in their best interests, with the Liberals committing to many broken ALP promises, including Rowville railway line, extending the Epping line to South Morang and Cranbourne line to Cranbourne East. While the libs have also thrown in an extension of the 48 tram to Doncaster, something which obviously makes a lot of sense.

The campaign hasn’t been without dirty politics either, much of it also coming from the ALP. Terrified that they will lose the seat of Melbourne to the Greens, they have been making claims that the Greens have done a dirty deal with the Liberals. Along with this is the claim that the Greens will be preferencing the Liberals in a number of seats, when in fact the Greens will be issuing split ticket how to vote cards (allowing voters to vote Green then have a choice over ALP/Liberal). Furthermore, they’ve been making the ridiculous suggestion that voting for the Greens would somehow elect a Liberal government even bringing Peter Garrett down to Melbourne to make this claim, even though the Greens are more likely to from a coalition with a Labor government. So Bronwyn Pike is out and they’ve even brought Garrett down to celebrate! Though seriously, Garrett has become such a sellout for the Labor party.

The Libs have also had their turn at attacking the Greens. In addition to digging the usual social policies, they also attack the Greens for limiting infrastructure, stating “No new freeways to be built &en; regardless of need or traffic congestion”. Unfortunately, they don’t seem to relise that freeways don’t solve traffic congestion, rather making it worse and with this in mind there is no need.

Another amusing tidbit I saw in the local paper was some Family First signs being defaced with white masks and the letters “KKK”. While certainly I can’t endorse such behaviour, I really do think we should keep religion out of politics. Not to mention that Family First don’t rate too highly on transport, with support for every freeway proposal in the known universe.

The Democrats, People Power and the Greens have all released good policies on transport. Though it is the Greens that seem to have the best chance, with many tipping (see: Winners picked) that they’ll pick up Melbourne and the possibility that they’ll have the balance of power in the new upper house. So with a few seats in the upper house and possibly a few more in the lower house, the Greens ought to make a difference. Meanwhile the Libs are certainly pulling ahead (slightly) of the ALP on transport issues.

The PTUA has also released it’s scorecard comparing the various parties at the upcoming election.

Now only to wait for the results, tomorrow night.

Yesterday, me and Daniel caught up again to go riding. We decided on the Dandenongs again, ignoring the fact that the forecast said few showers. We couldn’t go on the weekend because the train line is closed again between Box Hill and Ringwood and I couldn’t go Monday, so Friday it had to be. This time we decided tot ake the train out there to do more riding in the hills, tossingup whether to start on the Belgrave line or the Lilydale line. The fact that the train wound up in Lilydale was the deciding factor.

At this point I had initially planned to take the Warbuton Trail to Mount Evelyn. Though we got a little lost around Mt. Lilydale College. The old reservation disappears into the school and things don’t always work out as the Melway would lead you to believe. The map showed a small track of reserve behind the school, though it didn’t lead onto the bike trail so obviously as shown in the Melway. Instead we wound up in a paddock and battled blackberries and a barbed fence to get back out onto the bike trail. Had we followed the school boundry more, I think we would have been alright.

None the less, once we got back onto the trail, the ride out to Mount Evelyn was fairly nice; 8km into the ride we arrived at Mt. Evelyn, where decided to stop for lunch. The choice was between a bakery and a cafe. Given that the bakery wasn’t as flash looking as the one we’ve stopped at in The Basin and that most of the people appeared to be at the cafe, we opted for the cafe. At this point it was already 2pm as we had started out late. I had a steak sandwich which was fairly good.

However, over lunch the rain really started to set in and at some points the Dandenongs were completely invisible. It was starting to rain lightly when we had arrived, though we had hoped it would pass while we were there. Instead, it was at it’s worst when we were ready to live and go off on our ride. It has to be remembered that showers in the rest of Melbourne will no doubt fall as heavy rain around the Dandenongs as the clouds dump their loud. To make matters worse, I thought I had packed a spray jacket, only to realise I had nothing to keep dry at all. To much disappointment, at this point it became obvious that we were going to have to head back. So we immediately sprinted back to Lilydale, at no less than 30kph for most of the way (it was downhill though on a very soft grade) I was peddling along at 40kph for a large part as I was trying to stay warm.

It was still raining when we got back to Lilydale and I was drenched when we got to the station. The was a train on the platform with 2 minutes to departure so we boarded immediately. Some strange character came through and demanded that I move my bike. My immediate reaction was what is this smart alec thinking? There’s plenty of space to get past!

I pointed out that the back wheel was as far back as it could go and that he had at least half a metre to get through. Though he pointed at Daniel’s bike which was leaning across one of the doorways (the one not being used for the platform at that station). I told him that this would just block off the doorway to which he he had no answer. A girl then walked in and wanted to go through so he stepped aside to let her through. She got past without any trouble. Yet he still went back to demanding that I move my bike. At this point a bunch of high school students that had been watching were really starting to take amusement. He finally said “Okay, would you like to delay this train by 10 minutes?” and pulled out a massive walkie talkie thing. I then realised that he was probably the train driver, though unidentifiable as a Connex employee in the jacket he was wearing. I moved the damn bike anyway and as he had just got past I said to him “You could have got past easily anyway” (not even in a nasty way). He turned around and asked if i would like to wait for the police to show up, so I said that they wouldn’t waste their time. He walked off in a huff, the high school students were really amused by that point and commenting on what a prick he was. Some of them joked about it when they later got off, “the fucking bike’s in the way”, when they had already walked past it. Maybe he had been having a bad day, but that’s no way for Connex employees to treat passengers (had he asked nicely in the first place, there would have been no problem).

The rain was already clearing up as we approached Ringwood so we decided to get off there and ride the last bit back to Box Hill, having not done so much riding. We ended up doing almost 30km when we got back. It didn’t really feel like that much. We looked back at the Dandenongs when we were half way back it was evident that it had stopped raining. Oh well.

It’s been over a week, though things are slow in the land of Jeremy’s blog at the moment. Last Thursday, while I still had the luxury of being on holidays from TAFE, me and my mate Chris took the train down to Warrnambool for the day. Mainly because I had a free V/Line voucher to use.

So first is first, I had to get up at 7am, which is remarkably early for me these days, probably the earliest I’ve been up since I had to leave for Sydney earlier this year. Though I was able to repeat this effort one day for TAFE and actually get there on time, but not for the other day of TAFE this week. None the less, I got down to yee ol’ Spencer Street station (now officially known as Southern Cross… Southern where?) at 8:30 and the train left on time at 8:49.

Was good to sit back and enjoy the trip, until we got closer to Warrnambool and found the rain was starting to set in. Just over three hours later and we were in Warrnambool at midday. So we walked around looking for lunch, dismissing various pubs and cafés until we found a pub we liked. After lunch (which for me consisted of a steak sandwich with chips and a few drinks along side it), we walked up to the visitor information centre, located conveniently a good walk out of town at the Flagstaff Hill maritime museum. We decided we’d head down and have a shot at minigolf, only to find the place submerged in water and subsequently closed. So after photographing some geese, we took a bus back into town (it just happens that we turned up at a bus stop just in time for the hourly bus).

With two and a half hours to spare we just walked around town for a while and kicked back to some pancakes which turned out to be rather good amidst all the rain and cold weather. We got back to the station well in time for the 17:40 train back to Melbourne, kicking back for another 3 and a half hours. It was mostly too dark to see anything by that stage though we had a little for dinner from the buffet car.

Got back into Spencer Street in time for the 9:38pm train to Box Hill. I was truly knackered by the time I got home though it’s good to get out of Melbourne every once in a while.

Photos online in my gallery as well as flickr.

Seems to be that Connex have taken to routinely closing the upward/exit escalator during off-peak times at Box Hill. Yet they open it up and have it running for peak-hour.

So what could the reason be? To save electricity? Or is it about to fall apart so they’re only running it in peak hour to get the maximum life out of it? Then why do they need to barricade it off?

So then what’s wrong with taking the stairs, isn’t the exercise supposed to be good for you? I’d have no problem taking the stairs if there wasn’t 50 other people being forced to take them at the same time. That and I get enough exercise walking to the station, that taking the stairs or the escalator (which I walk up anyway) is hardly going to make a difference. Not to mention that this is just one more thing to frustrate commuters, causing them to reconsider the prospects of driving a car instead. When you already have to put up with inferior off-peak frequencies ranging from 15 to 40 minutes, you don’t need this little extra annoyance.

No doubt the problem is that the escalator is so old that is is in need of replacement, though they should never have let it get beyond disrepair. It’s likely that they won’t do anything now, until the shopping centre is redeveloped and they finally overhaul the ‘transit interchange’ (railway station and bus terminal). Who knows when that will be….

Another fun night of getting home by public transport. Got to Spencer Street somewhat short of missing a train. With trains only every half hour that’s quite a long wait. So walked up to the 109 tram stop to find that I had just missed a tram as well. Went back to the station and raided the brochure rack, they had every timetable but for the lines that I use, though there were some brochures that I was interested in taking a look at such as some misconceived propaganda on ticket inspectors. I also took some timetables for other lines which I now realise that I’ll never use but what the heck they were there and easy to grab so will probably just decorate my spare change drawer or something. Sat around at the station admiring the new wavy that they are building, while twiddling my thumbs.

Finally the train arrived, fairly full with drunkards, probably a result of Oaks Day or something. Though I’d rather them on the train than on the road, I could have done without the noise. It did, however, turn out to be a form of free entertainment. With trains so well patronised and only every half hour, it denies all credibility to those in bureaucracy who say they’ll provide more train services when people use them.

Arrived at Box Hill and the escalator was stationary and it wasn’t evident until I was near the top that there was a barrier saying not to use the escalator. Not to mention that it was padlocked to the sides leaving everyone to climb over it. The fools, if you’re going to close an upward-escalator you put the barrier at the bottom or at both ends!

So it’s fair to say that I am p!%#ed off at Connex, they obviously know how to turn away passengers. Though not as much as I am pissed off with Bracks and the rest of his lazy government. They promised to do everything for public transport before they were elected in 1999 and haven’t done a thing.

The antics of ticket inspectors has once again shown up in the media (see The Age which even has video footage), this week. While, if you choose to travel without a valid ticket you should expect to get some sort of fine, I’ve long been unimpressed with the way that the State Government and operators handle this aspect of the public transport system.

Well you consider factors such as the relatively small offence involved, yet the unproportionally high fine to be occured (much higher than parking fines), it’s no wonder that these matters escalate out of hand. Before too long we have a passenger being pinned down to the ground for not paying a $1.80 fare.

Not to mention that we didn’t have any of these problems when we had tram conductors and adequate staffing of the public transport system. Hide and seek ticket inspections will just lead to continually high fare evasion and more of these embarrassing situations for the operators and the State Government.

Although I always travel with a valid ticket, my own encounter with ticket inspectors has also been less than pleasing. You often see them standing in a row like soldiers waiting to attack outside stations such as Melbourne Central, Flinders Street and Box Hill. The other day a ticket inspector decided to study for my concession card with no other purpose than to deliberately hold me up. Not to mention that they remind me of those agents out of the Matrix, waiting for you in their grey suits.

If only they’d bring back the friendly staff.

Not long after the train system was privatised, various adjustments were made by Connex. One of these involved stopping a few express trains at Surrey Hills station. At first it was only a very small handful of services, so to most people it went unnoticed. Though some time later this was increased, so now a fair number of express services stop there.

The justification was that travel time would not be increased as improvements to track meant time would be regained further down the line. However, travel time is probably not the biggest and only concern of passengers. For one, by doing this it provides less room for late running services to catch up, thus contributing towards unreliability. Another factor is that it complicates the timetable and creates more confusion for passengers. There are already enough variations in train stopping patterns without trains stopping here.

In addition, it is usually trains that don’t stop at Glenferrie and sometimes even Camberwell that gain the extra stop at Surrey Hills. This may seem reasonable at first, since surely these lucky ’super express’ passengers could put up with an extra stop? Well in actual fact these express trains are usually very packed to begin with. Which brings us to the next point….

The biggest problem this creates is that more passengers are being crammed into already overcrowded express trains. It isn’t so obvious when travelling from the city, you can’t tell that you are crammed in like a sardine because a few extra people will be getting off at Surrey Hills. Though it’s more obvious when you’re on a crowded city bound train.

This morning while taking the 7:56am City Loop train from Box Hill, I managed to take these photos. They’re rather crude, though they do show how crowded the train was before it stopped at Surrey Hills. You can’t tell from the photo, but few, if any people get off when the train stops here (no one in the carriage got off from what I could tell). So here they are:

Probably the last consideration remaining is what it all means for Surrey Hills people. It may seem like a nice gesture to give them some express trains, though in reality I don’t think a handful of trains is going to be that useful. Even with Glenferrie which gets far more express services, enough don’t stop there that you can’t rely on getting an express train every time you travel from there in peak hour. One might also argue that a fair number of people use Surrey Hills. Even if that is true, I can only think that they may in future find some justification in stopping express services at Canterbury, East Camberwell, Auburn, Hawthorn… you get the idea.

A better solution might be to co-ordinate services so that passengers can transfer to an express from a stopping-all-stations train.

It’s an exciting life I lead, I tell ya. I haven’t been doing all that much that’s interesting, so there’s little to write about. It’s winter and it’s mostly chilli so it’s tempting to stay nice and warm in the house.

Been missing a few classes at TAFE. Though finally when I did get to one last week, I was the only one to turn up. Though it probably wasn’t the most important subject.

Last night was another PTUA meeting, this time for the Outer East branch. Though it wasn’t just any meeting, it was organised as a forum on bus reforms, with representatives from operators and NGOs present, so was kind of interesting. Afterwards a few of us went for dessert at the usual haunt, il Tempo in Degraves Street where I ordered Tiramisù. It was delicious.