“Connex being at least part French-owned, surprisingly has contracted with the similarly French-owned Alstom to build and manage its rail infrastructure.”

Alstom’s maintainance/management role has since been taken over by United Group Infrastructure (an Australian company). Actually I think they may have bought out Alstom’s Australian operations.

Err, couple = 4 is my dairy farm upbringing. Whenever my Dad asked me to get a couple of nails, or a couple of anything, it ALWAYS meant at least 3. My kids grew up with the same arithmetic.

Or if you’re Italian, its like the Joe Avati Joke about the Nonna sending her Grandson to bring in “Due Patati” (2 Potatoes), and the Grandson dutifully brings in 2, when she really meant 8, and thus wgot in trouble when he went to the Butchers for 2kgs of meat, he returned with 8Kgs

I don’t know if the two companies are actually corporately linked, or if they are just joint ventures. I’m sure that both being French is merely coincidental.

The other set of Melbourne rolling stock (since the privatisations) was for the M trains (Bayside, subsequently departed) and their part of the network taken over by Connex. As per my previous post about writing manuals for Hong Kong’s MTRC, the same Narre Warren based company built the doors for the M trains that were built by Siemens (either in Bavaria or Austria, can’t remember which built the trains cos my client was also building similar doors for whatever the other Tram company (also departed) was).

Couple of interesting (or ranty) points:

1. when Jeffrey privatised the metropolitan railway and tram networks, the successful bidders were required to build new rolling stock. There was NO provision for local content of any sort in the contracts. The winning consortia originally planned to build their tram and train rolling stock in their home countries, either by Alstom or Siemens (spelt France and Germany/Austria). It was only after Bracks gained government that local content became an issue, which is how I ended up writing manuals for the Siemens rolling stock. (ie, if you push the button and the door pops out before it slides, I wrote its manuals).

2. I’d really like to find out whose bright idea it was to split BOTH the rail and tram networks in Melbourne into 2 entities (total of 4 different operators, originally). Just like gas, water, electricity, etc how can a “competitive element” exist when you essentially have monopolies, one handling east-west transport and the other handling north-south, for each of trams and trains? Surprisingly, it didn’t work.

3. Just by bad luck, I suppose, I’d already gone through a similarly ill-thought out privatisation: what was once Government Aircraft Factories – builders of Nomad, F/A-18, Jindivik and assorted parts for every Boeing, Airbus and Fokker aircraft you’ve ever flown in (apart from you ex B-17/B-29 jockeys) – was privatised as AeroSpace Technologies of Australia. Reason for privatisation – anything GAF built involved subsidy (partly because our owner – Defence, mainly the RAAF – told us how much we could charge for anything we built for our customers (spelt RAAF), and any difference invariably ended up as subsidy. (There were also other inefficiencies, but nothing that good management could not have fixed). Anyway, if any word is bound to get front page treatment in an anti-PS/govt paper it is subsidy. No matter that the end result is ACTUAL cost.

Solution: corporatise the company so it could charge actual cost plus profit. This was supposed to result in savings to government, but the fatal flaw was evident: PLUS PROFIT(originally 15%).

Anyway, the next decision was to fully privatise the company – enter Rockwell Aviation – and an absolute bargain was made. Subsequently, and for other reasons, Rockwell folded, to be acquired by Boeing. End result, virtually the entire Australian aerospace industry ended up, at bargain basement (and B3, not B1) prices. And still the money the RAAF etc has to pay for their purchases has only gone up. Because everything is now ACTUAL cost PLUS profit (whatever Boeing wants to charge – who else is on hand to build the stuff?)

4 Why would British Airways (virtually bankrupt) want to merge with Qantas (one of the most profitable airlines on Earth)? Of course, it’s all back to the glory days of Imperial Airways/Qantas Imperial Airways of course. Couldn’t be any other reason, surely?

I was always under the impression that this was only meant to be a stop gap – that the intention was always to link to cross the river into South Brisbane – why do you think they’ve been constantly messing with the flows along Grey, Merivale and Cordelia Streets?

Well, I don’t know. All they ever needed to do was to make an under or over pass that smoothly joined the bottom of the inner city bypass with the start of the S.E. freeway only 100 metres away, at the time they made it. The merging and de-merging with all the Coro drive traffic is what causes the congestion. A bridge across the river solves practically nothing.

As it is, living in the Brisbane inner-west, even travelling by *car* is a pain in the arse, especially when that over-egged fiddle playing Andre fucking Rieu is laying some steaming pile of poop in Lang Park this evening. Causing a massive fucking traffic jam, when I left work late with a stinking headache in a taxi (sorry Mark that’s why I didn’t make it to your PhD drinks). In the traffic jam on Milton Rd, some tool in a Lexus asked the taxi driver where “a great place to park” was!!! I mean, fuck these people.

But all that might be the codeine in the Nurofen Plus talking.

Perth has the card system too – a few teething problems at first, but it works really well now. I think it’d be easier to get a free-fare hour going with a card system. Set the machines to charge $0.00 if the card is swiped between 6am-7am, etc.

But Mr Barnett finds it difficult to just that, thus justifying delaying his pre-election promise to give Seniors and Disability Pensioners free travel between 10am-3pm and all weekend.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/11/25/2429127.htm

I mean what retard designed the inner city bypass to SE freeway junction so they don’t join up without a big messy traffic merge on Coro drive?

I was always under the impression that this was only meant to be a stop gap – that the intention was always to link to cross the river into South Brisbane – why do you think they’ve been constantly messing with the flows along Grey, Merivale and Cordelia Streets?

I recall, gads – this was maybe 10 years ago when we last lived in Brissy – they were dumping rock into the river right in front of the Hale St/Coro Drive intersection in preparation for establishing head works for the bridge. Then all hell broke loose because the Sth Brissy folks realised they were about to have a freeway pushed through their burb and it came to a halt.

My gripe is why they’ve NEVER opened up the Ekka loop to commuters? Not only could it have serviced the RBH more efficiently, but an extra stop behind Spring Hill would’ve been mildly successful as well.

Of course, you still have it good compared with the rest of us. Up here in Hicksville, we have an extensive rail network pointing out in every direction (South, West and North) from the CBD yet not a commuter train to be seen. All made worse by pollies of all persuations thinking it remarkably smart to close our station, which is all of 100m from the CBD, and relocating it to the fringe of the town.