Sometimes, the novelty of being in a marginal seat is enough to convince one that the Victorian election is all about Labor and the Greens fighting over who’s the most progressive. As such, it’s a useful corrective to look at the Liberal Party’s list of policies, for instance, those on transport. Commitments to build roads- all of them in key outer-urban and regional marginal seats. No ifs, ands, or buts – just promises to build. And four announcements about public transport – a promise to “Save Victoria’s W-Class trams”, to “hold a competition” to come up with concepts to refurbish Melbourne’s central train station, send rent-a-cops blundering around patrolling Melbourne’s trains, and to “conduct a study” into a rail line to Doncaster, straight into Mary Wooldrige’s safe Liberal seat. Not actually build the line, mind you, just plan it. Which is handy, because there’s every chance that the study would come up with the same answers as the Eddington Report – that heavy rail running up the Eastern Freeway would attract SFA additional passengers to public transport at very large additional cost. Clearly, despite the attention it gets in inner and middle Melbourne, the Tories don’t believe public transport is a prime issue out in the outer-suburban and regional marginal seats where the state election will be decided.
In any case, the Greens – in a rerun of the federal election – actually have a transport policy. As expected, they propose a general expansion of public transport, including expansions of the metropolitan system, and “Swiss-style” regional public transport (which sounds great, except that Victoria’s town planning and settlement patterns are almost, but not entirely, unlike Switzerland). But the key recommendation is the long-term abandonment of the system of contracted-out public transport, in which private companies operate Melbourne’s train, tram, and bus systems. A public transport authority would, instead, be responsible for operating, scheduling, and ultimately maintaining and running (with the exception of buses) Melbourne’s public transport.
On the bright side, making government directly responsible for public transport would hopefully reduce the game of responsibility-ducking currently played between the current private operator, the previous operator (who minimized their losses by skimping on train and track maintenance) , the train manufacturer Siemens, the unions, and the government. And a bit of central planning and head-knocking might achieve better scheduling coordination between modes (particularly trains and buses). But I’m not convinced that governments directly running maintenance facilities and employing tram drivers is a cure-all. Perth’s government-run public transport operations are generally praised. But Sydney’s aren’t. Nor were Melbourne’s a picnic either, back in the days of the Cain government.
So, after providing a synopsis of Liberal and Greens policies, can you also please sum-up the Government’s public transport policies for us?
Andos, at this stage they don’t seem to have announced any new election policies on public transport.
The government policy is in the Victorian Transport Plan, which is a long-term plan for a bunch of new infrastructure, notably several big heavy rail projects and better bus services (many already operating) in the outer suburbs.
However, they have no plans to change the contracting model, which dates from the Kennett era.
Public transport – don’t get me started on the years on incompetency and underfunding that we have.
But, it does make sense to have one single authority to co-ordinate trains, trams and buses, whether that be public or private.
I’d like it to be government owned and run for one reason only; so that the government doesn’t get to blame whichever private company happens to own whichever piece of the system is currently stuffing up. “Sorry, nothing we can do about this. It’s the fault of Metro, Yarra Trams, whoever, whatever. Not us. Don’t look over here Nothing we can do”.
Well the glorious government over here in NSW owns the whole thing, but they just blame whichever contractor they’ve chosen to deliver new Chinese built trains/new integrated ticketing system or any other new initiave you care to name.
Certainly blame shifting is more difficult when you run the damn thing, but in the case of NSW, practise makes perfect.
Nor were Melbourne’s a picnic either, back in the days of the Cain government.
They were tremendously better in the rest of the state than they are now! I used to be able to catch a V-Line train (which ran several times a day) which was clean, staffed and within 15 minutes of on-time. Since Kennett, the services were cut in half, many lines closed or just for freight, the trains frequently break down and 3 hours late is not uncommon – and I guess there’s not just enough votes out here to bother with it. Transport between Ballarat and Melbourne or Geelong and Melbourne is slightly improved since Kennett, though.
For all the faults currently Melbourne public transport is better than its ever been.
I must lack the rose coloured glasses of those who wish for the good old days.
Talking about state politics have you seen the video by the Greens candidate for Pascoe Vale Liam Farrelly. Its quite out there!!!
Works well for me FXH – I’m covered by 3 tram routes within a 5-minute walk, ten to the train, and I don’t even know where the buses go, but they’re everywhere too.
Not everyone’s in North Carlton though.
Who runs it (public/private) is irrelevant and a token argument compared to how well it is funded and supported.
Unless a public transport system is considered integral to a functioning city and/or state it will be undermined and ultimately fail. For example, if a government wants to privatise it’s PT it will simply let it fail and claim that privatisation will save it. The Greens argument in Melbourne is now kind of the opposite to this, but the root problem there is the same.
The idea of centralising planning, ticketing and timetabling to meet Melbourne and Victoria’s holistic transport needs should be a fundamental requirement in any serious attempt at fixing the problems there. Everything else is horse trading, including who actually runs or builds the services, although for other reasons I support the idea of government run mass transport.
Also FXH – not everyone looking back fondly at tram conductors etc etc… some people are thinking about where things are headed.
You want to ride on a superb public transport system? Get yourself to Hong Kong, and buy an octopus card.
Absolutely fucking amazingly good. Fast, clean trains run every 5 minutes, go under the sea, under the city over the land everywhere. Busses and trams too.
Want to buy something at the local equivqlent to 7/11? The octopus card works there too.
Suspect that the ownership is rather murky but it works so well.
Huggy
Paul Mees, senior lecturer in transport planning at RMIT, recently wrote an article for The Drum entitled “The public transport election?” that’s worth reading.
Same here when it comes to public transport FDB. But, I live in St. Kilda. Is it any coincidence that the suburbs with good public transport are the suburbs with the most expensive housing?
fdb – sure I know the inner city middle classes are best served by PT, but it has improved a bit, not enough, to the outer areas.
The stations almost everywhere, are better, the all modes tickets are great (and I think we were one of the firsts on that).
Cross town PT is ‘orrible.
I still have an aversion to buses – as do many others – I think its because they seem unpredictable as to where they might go.
People I know around Doncaster area tell me the buses that scoot down the free way are great.
We need to understand the psychology of bus use a bit better.
Hell in parts of Taiwan you can catch a double decker bus that has seats like a recliner armchair and videos like an airline.
I’d like to see more trams and light rail.
I like what some of the trams do in San Franciso – instead of going say straight down Brunswick St – High St Preston they wiggle – zig zag – across a few blocks either side say two blocks west, then two blocks straight up high then two blacks east then two block straight up high etc.
And why don’t the much loved, even by me, tram depots have super stops in them with good facilities and comfort,warm, cool sheltered, – after all trams will connect to almost anywhere from a tram depot – yet they all eschew passenger engagement.
The transport ticket “inspectors” are a blight on the city.
I’ve no love for the old tram conductors who are now mythologised – most were hopeless, lazy, rude and unhelpful, not to mention a great many of them half pissed. But we do need wandering conductors /inspectors who might help people/inspect tickets and heavens even sell you a ticket if you haven’t got one, can’t be too bloody hard to do.
There needs to be better co-ordination – but taking all transport back to direct running by government will be a bloody disaster.
And a schedule that say there will be 4 trains an hour from almost anywhere
All I can say is that anyone who complains about Melbourne’s public transport has never been to Adelaide.
Still, it’s not surprising that the Greens are the only party with an actual transport policy.
I find the Melbourne Urbanist blog ( http://melbourneurbanist.wordpress.com/ ), aka Dr Alan Davies, to be well worth reading when it comes to melbourne’s transport issues. Not that I always agree with him.
Huggy, Hong Kong has neatly solved the problem of encouraging developers to work together with public transport.
In Hong Kong, the MTR is the biggest property developer.
Build a station, build a collection of 30 storey apartment blocks on top of it.
Works for them. Not sure it’d work in Australia.
Hmmm, why would Hong Kong be able to run a good public transport system? Nothing to do with population densities amongst the highest in the world?
Robert – no one really tries it – the only good example I can think of is Box Hill. Combined train, bus station. Trains underneath and buses on top of shopping centre. Plenty (well a fair bit) of car parking as well. Some almost express -one stop I think – straight to CBD**
I’m not sure if its urban mythology but I always thought it was second only to Flinders St in passenger traffic.
** mind you its a common misunderstanding that all travel is to CBD – from memory most people work withing 10- 15 ks of where they live. And thats where Melb falls down.
And look at what happens when somebody tries to replicate the HK model in Melbourne. Geoffrey Rush turns up to protest with the other nimbies.
Thanks for the links there, Robert. I think it could be simplistic to only focus on ‘election promises’ here, since PT is such a long-term investment issue.
David Irving: as Robert has helpfully provided us in post # 2, the Government has a comprehensive PT policy.
Rob, you’re conflating two things here. Where’s the criticisism of Sydney’s transport safety and maintenance, or employment standards? There isn’t any; the criticism’s on timetabling and capacity, and more generally, on access.
Besides which if you took the vast majority of the criticism of Sydney’s infrastructure at face value you’d have the picture of a city halfway between Mogadishu immediately post-war and Los Angeles immediately post-riot. We’ve got a much larger and and more extensive network of public transport than Melbourne does, and it works better; it’s just that voters hate the Government here more than they do down where you are.
And your #20 comment goes triple for Sydney urban politics.
“Perth’s government-run public transport operations are generally praised”
I’m blissfully ignorant of Perth’s public transport system now, and hope to remain so, but I’m fairly sure a good many of the buses are now privately operated.
Liam, I think that about sums it up. I recall living in Newtown and whining that sometimes I had to wait for three trains before one came that I could fit onto. On a bad morning, that might be 15 minutes! Here in sunny Moreland 3 trains would take an hour. But luckily they don’t (yet) fill up until Brunswick station.
Nimbys complaining about development at PT hubs get right up my nose. Chatswood in Sydney is IMO a brilliant example of what you can do. Yes, they completely buried the train station under a great big residential tower. But few of those people drive to work even though the Pacific Highway is just outside the door, because the trains mean it’s 10 minutes to the CBD with a train every 5 minutes in peak hour. If Melbourne could do that with a second circle or mid-suburban loop I think we’d happily get another million people into the city. You’d have to bury the line, but cut and fill would work and since you’d be buying the buildings anyway (to redevelop) it’d possibly even turn a profit.
Personally, I just want decent commuter bike facilities. I’m not a recreational cyclist, dammit, I ride when i have somewhere to go.
Moz, the other point of Chatswood is that it’s a major suburban business district outside the CBD with a significant public transport presence. We’ve got lots: Parramatta, Blacktown, Hurstville, to a lesser extent Strathfield, Bankstown, Cabramatta, Bondi Junction. Does Melbourne plan transport around decentralised ? I’ve only ever been to the Chadstone shopping centre as far as the Melbourne other business districts go, but I don’t recall there being much in the way of accessible train transport there.
Russell at #23, it’s a little known fact that quite a few of Sydney’s private bus companies were so incompetent and undercapitalised in the leadup to the Olympics that they had to be compulsorily bought out by the Government.
Ah, Michael Knight, state socialist pinup boy.
Chadstone is just a big retail mall – not a real business hub.
Box Hill is a hub.
Russell, although there are 3 private bus contractors in Perth, it’s understood that if you have a complaint you still call Transperth directly and they’ll sort it out internally. No numbers given out for the private operators, just the one Transperth phone/site for everything. Which is much simpler for the passenger.
Stats show that usually 80% of services run on-time (i.e. no more than 4 minutes late).
Just had a Labor goon on the phone begging me to be grateful about the proposed upgrade of Balaclava Railway Station and St Kilda Library. Pity the Labor Party don’t look at a Melways or Google Maps before they ring people with utterly irrelevant election promises
FXB – you may think that tram conductors were lazy and stupid but they provided a degree of safety and taught passengers how to use trams. A blog in last weeks Age showed a great divide between passengers expected standards of behaviour on public transport. 55% of the retrenched tram conductors went straight on unemployment benefits, 10% might have been better off and the rest were worse off.
I don’t know how much the Department of Transport paid Accenture to write the Metlink software in 1992 (it wasn’t Y2K compliant) and how much commission it pays NAB to operate the ticket machines.
The Metlink system is being replaced by MYKI with software written in India by Keane Software who asked for coding help on PHP websites.
The choice is to run Metlink and Myki and pay corporations to collect the fares OR we can reduce the unemployment levels by using low paid tram conductors. Remember there are 7 qualified candidates for every job vacancy in Victoria, and there are more Australians in part time work than there are in full time jobs.
One of the lesser known facts is that the Department of Transport sets the timetables for trains, buses and trams throught out Victoria. Unfortunately the timetablers assume that the different modes of transport are in competition with each other, so its quite common for the connecting bus to depart 2 minutes before the train is scheduled to arrive, examples are
Cheltenham Station and Beaumaris bus (once every 2 hours)
Geelong station and Torquay bus(3 times on Saturday)
“Stats show that usually 80% of services run on-time (i.e. no more than 4 minutes late).”
A good reason to avoid public transport. If you rely on the bus to get to work each day, it looks like one day a week you’re going to be late. More than 4 minutes late could mean that the bus scheduled for that time never turned up (a driver off sick) and you waited 15 minutes for the next one which was stuffed with annoyed passengers.
FXB Chadstone is the geographic centre of melbourne’s population and as public transport uses the shopping centre as a hub it is a hub.
Box Hill is relevant to the population on the Lilydale line and quite a trek from the south eastern suburbs.
I don’t understand why people complain about NSW’s public transport system. It’s far superior to Victoria’s privatised system.
Note: the following statistics are for 2009-2010.
It’s got the best On-Time Running in Australia with 96% for Suburban trains (within 4 minutes) and 94% for Intercity Trains (within 6 minutes).
The condition of it’s track is far better (with 90%+ of all sleepers now concrete), most of its overhead is tensioned (so it doesn’t sag when it’s hot unlike in Victoria) and its trains actually work in hot weather*.
It has a service reliability of 99.7% (Meaning only 0.3% of trains get canceled).
The most recent Customer Survey (2009) by the independent regulator shows increased levels of satisfaction.
http://www.transportregulator.nsw.gov.au/documents/media-release/mediarelease_cityrail_survey2009.pdf/view
Out of 37 areas surveyed only one area had a slight decrease.
You will never see this in the newspapers because anything provided by the government is always bad. Evidence doesn’t count.
* Some idiot in Victoria’s private system thought it would be a brilliant idea to buy off-the-shelf rolling stock built for colder European conditions.
I’d like to see the “costings” on the major parties’ climate inaction policies. I’m pretty sure they haven’t been submitted to treasury.
On transport – the VIC Greens have called the emperor on his nudity, and want Melbourne rail and trams back in ublic hands,
It really is the only sensible solution: those profits lining useless rent-seekers pockets should be plowed back into infrastructure. Kosky admitted it last year: privatization hasnt saved the VIC govt a cent. All theyve done is lose the income. What a shit deal! Would any business operate on this basis?
Why are these private operators allowed to print money when our fares should clearly be going into failing infrastructure. Go on, tell us. Someone.
*crickets*
I ask again: how many millions do late trains cost the VIC economy? no one even asks now its private. The whole things been a con. It needs to end with the current contracts.
Lefty, the problem with being in government hands is that when you have Henry Bolte and Arthur Rylah in charge PT gets starved of funds. Those lovable W class cars were kept going into the seventies with open sides (W2 variant) because successive governments starved them of funds. The technology of these things was literally 1900s.
I don’t see that ownership has a real lot to do with the standard of PT. Investment and planning on the other hand. But then Kennett got rid of most of the planners.
Oh, and did I mention Clem Jones in Brisbane axing the tram system?
“Huggy, Hong Kong has neatly solved the problem of encouraging developers to work together with public transport.
In Hong Kong, the MTR is the biggest property developer.
Build a station, build a collection of 30 storey apartment blocks on top of it. Works for them.”
There are other differences too — don’t have people that vandalize everything, don’t have people that dump litter and crap everywhere, and don’t have gangs on your system so people are afraid to take it late at night.
Agree, HB, with the view of Hong Kong’s system. It has spoilt me for Melbourne – I now resent having to wait 10 minutes for transport, when in HK the longest I ever had to wait was five minutes, and that was out in the burbs.
It isn’t all about density, though that helps. Perth has a very low density, and all its new well-planned and coordinated lines have been very highly used.
It is all about PT that (1) goes where people want to go (2) is frequent enough that it makes a viable alternative (3) doesn’t require more than one modal change to get most places (4) is clean and safe enough.
Mind you, PT gets safe enough when it is used so well that there are always too many people around to allow for graffiti, bad behaviour etc. 9 out of every 10 transport trips in HK are on public transport. I think the figure is 8 in every 100 for Melbourne, and don’t know about the other capitals.
Ugh, I hate the nostalgia for the W-class trams. They are difficult to use – even for the young and able-bodied as I am, as the step up from the road is really high and steep – they are slow, and the seats are uncomfortable! Give me the fancy new ones anyday, although they have their own issues (too open inside – when the tram has to brake suddenly, passengers go flying!)
I catch a W Class almost every day and I like them.
The funniest thing was a few months go when the tram lurched to a stop. Not uncommon. A sigh settles around the passengers as the driver investigates the cause.
The driver announces; “The tram has come off the tracks. So, I want everyone to get off and we can push the tram back on.”
Astounded murmurs and a few quiet protests from the passengers. “Well, it’s either that or we wait here forever for someone to solve the problem.”
So, we got off the tram and pushed it back onto the tracks. “One, two, three, push”. Surprisingly easily, actually. And everyone was all smiles having accomplished this odd task. It was a strange combination of community effort and third world solutions to a problem. But I kinda liked it. If you’ve gotta problem, solve it. Although the OH&S, not to mention public liability problems, don’t bear thinking about.
Fine, in Sydney a story like that would wind up on the front page of the Daily Telegraph, featuring interviews with the passengers being disgusted at third-world infrastructure, an editorial calling for full privatisation at no cost to business, and a caricature of Clover Moore as a witch.
billie – I was just writing shorthand on the hop – I didn’t mean that Chadstone wasn’t important – just that it wasn’t a hub as I see it – with retail, offices, manufacturing, rail and buses and trams all coming together. Like Box Hill.
I’m sure there are other examples but Box Hill was the only one I could think of with car, rail, bus and tram hub. (well one tram line anyway )and with substantial employment in white collar and blue collar surrounding in a built up residential low rise area. Plus hospital and large TAFE.
I love the W class – I don’t want the whole system to be all W but having a few around is great. If theres a line and a W in it I’ll nearly always go for the W in preference.
And while I’m at it – whats the reason we have those awful dirty looking grey trams – can we go back to the W colours.
Liam @ 41. Not forgetting the fact that the city’s resident shock-jocks would spend at least a week stoking the fires of outrage and bemoaning a government that could allow such things to happen while also decrying the ‘nanny state’ at any sign of government intervention of which they don’t approve.
Does a city get the media it deserves?
Footscray, a ‘transit city’, is another transport hub, except for the cars bit. Actually it’s doing quite well, there are apartment blocks mushrooming up everywhere.
Of course,
knifeHighpoint sucked the retail out of it ages ago, but it’ll come back.The thing I don’t understand about melbourne PT is the costings given to a few kilometres of heavy rail by DTF. They’re just magic numbers, invented out of whole cloth it seems.
Oh another thing I don’t quite get is myki – what if any service does it provide that is additional or superior to the current ‘dumb’ system? When there was talk of it being an e-wallet, that was interesting, but for the life of me I cannot see any improvement it has brought or may bring.
Yep, I Liam I can see it being stirred up into a disgrace. What I wondered about is what the driver wrote on his incident report. Or maybe eyes were just averted from it.
How about: “Community-driven consultative transportation solution was applied in a focused organised manner. Recommend proceeding with a thorough independent evaluation process”
Liam, you’ve written lots of reports in your time, haven’t you?
Wilful – MYKI allows somebody to type in a ticket holders name and the system will identify what mode of transport the person is on, where the unit is or where the person left public transport and when. Personally the anonymity of Metlink has a number of advantages.
MsLaurie I prefer the seating on W-Class trams, the seats are more comfortable than the Combino units that force sitters to slump or sit bolt upright with no back support. W-class trams are shorter, as Fine says lighter, and have 38 seats as opposed to the 32 seats on the longer, heavier Combino units. And of course many workers are on public transport from 40 minutes to an hour and some people have to stand all day at work.
I don’t have to carry at least two types of ticket around with me to get the $3 rate on Sundays, and I can now get the $3 rate on Saturdays as well. Also don’t have to manage the last two trips on a 10x2hr to make sure I don’t get caught out when trying to roll it over to an all day. And a minor benefit is that the eftpos on the machines is faster; I can now buy a new ticket by eftpos and make it on to the train after the bells have already started – nearly impossible to do that with the metcard machines.
I wouldn’t go overboard about the value of the benefits but there are some definite small ones for me.
Fine, I’m a connoisseur of hardcore bureau argot. As they say.
“Liam, you’ve written lots of reports in your time, haven’t you?”
Hmmm… I’d have liked ‘committment’ and ‘key’ to get a look in somewhere, but not bad.
7/10
It’s not the measure of the KPI that counts, beardo, it’s how you engage with it.
I’d first have to make a committment to engage, and embed that committment fully in my corporate culture, before any real engagement can be leveraged around your KPIs.
Learnings are fun!
A ‘going forward’ could have also been thrown in there. Marks deducted for failing to include corporate speak in a public sector document thereby failing to leverage incomprehensibility for increased buy in.
Good point. We should all be willing to bring on board constructive consultation outcomes, and integrate stakeholder-introduced policy criteria into a comprehensive community-managed set of frameworks.
There’s two issues with myki:
1) The current generation of ticket vending machines are becoming increasingly difficult to maintain.
2) Every politician and transport bureaucrat starts drooling when they do a study tour to London or Hong Kong and play with their smartcard ticketing systems.
I’d insist on a sunset clause embedded in each KPI.
@Robert – On (2) they could come to Brisbane – ours works well!
I think public transport should be free anyway. We pay for it with our taxes and the costs in getting people to pay probably outweigh the benefits. How many billion has myki cost and it still doesn’t work properly?
Way to drag the thread back on topic, Robert and Mark
I was actually enjoying the weasel-word badinage …
True, Fine, but myki is world’s best practice.
Damn, I’d forgotten. Thanks for the reminder, joe.
1) The current generation of ticket vending machines are becoming increasingly difficult to maintain.
But they’re only ten years old or less!
I would have just liked Brumby to have stood up and said “we’re sorry, we agree that myki was a waste of money, I’ve fired my Minister because of it”. Never happen of course, and hey, Peter Beattie was always saying sorry wasn’t he?
wilful, think how many families of Indian software developers have been fed, housed and clothed for the duration of the contract. Victoria is the home of overseas aid and they still hate us.
Fine @ 60 – well I think we’d pay even more if it was completely free. But perhaps there is an argument for making it free during off peak times. To help spread the load out more and remove some of the congestion problems.
Joe2 why do we employ Indian programmers, what’s wrong with employing Australian graduates to write ticketing systems like we did in the past.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought that one of the major issues with Myki is that unlike just about every other PT smartcard system in the world, Victoria opted for a fully centralized system and this decision not only lead to the problems with trams especially, but also fundamentally limits the ability to use the card as an electronic purse, as was once talked about.
I’d love to know what the rationale was behind this decision.
Martin, from what I recall it was a fraud-prevention measure.
Which seems to be a case of accepting actual problems and limitations in order to get a theoretical benefit (given the generally low rate of fraud on other systems).
billie @ 67, much as it pains me to admit it (being a genuine IT Professional), the Indians are often both better and cheaper than local programmers. Disclaimer: I work with a bunch of them, and they’re very high quality.
Ok, my, my MYKI.
In August, I bought 2nd half year school pass for daughter at local manned railway station. They couldn’t recharge to current card which had been in use for 1st half year – must issue a new card. Was told it would take 5-7 days to activate. Nothing happens etc… Days/weeks go by. She develops the technique of getting on the bus shielding the pass/scanner when she boards. No ticket inspectors on the crowded trains. Its not working. I go back to place of purchase and find out (a) that after filling out the application form, the forms are collected once a week to go to H/O in city for processing – the local POS can’t load up, access data or do anything – all centrally controlled; (b) they can’t do anything about it; (c) file complaint form about card not working (d) wait more days – nothing, card still not working (e) get on phone to myki people (f) now have reference number (g) apparently they load them onto the system in batches – so should be soon (OK, admittedly they were BUSY – but this would have been expected) – hopefully hat weekend (h) nothing (i) phone again, told to go to local train station with the pass and find a BIG machine not just a scanner and place it on the spot for a minute or so – this should jigger the chip to make it work (j) nothing happens (k) back to manned train station to get a REPLACEMENT CARD (l) fill out another form for replacement card, hand in old card, get new card (m) new card will take 5-7 days to be activated… form has to get sent into h/o etc (n) school holidays come as it is the end of term 3 (o) over holidays we drive up to Sydney (the girls were busting to do ‘Sunrise’ and they did, but that is another story) (p) Term 4 starts – and MYKI cards now works!!!!
Hey,
Good post – Labor announced their transport policy today. It builds on a lot of the stuff they’ve done already in office. What are your thoughts on it?
http://alpvictoria.com.au/news-events-media/news/$354-6m-pledge-for-regional-trains,buses-and-roads/
That is a big long list of road projects in Labor’s transport policy.
And Pakula has announced building a “dedicated bus route” along the reserved rail easement from South Morang to Mernda. [link]
They just can’t do rail can they?