Category: PT Problem of the Day

Good connecting services are vital for making more trips viable by public transport. In the case of feeder buses to stations, frequent services with good interchange facilities can help relieve station car parks, and make it easier for those travelling across the day — not just the lucky few who can drive to a station…

Sections of single track on the Metro network are a direct cause of low frequencies, and cause delays to quickly cascade. In this example at Westona on the Altona Loop section of the Werribee line, a citybound train has to wait for an outbound train to arrive before it can continue on. Similar bottlenecks are…

The $9.80 fee for refunds of Myki credit was removed on the 1st of January this year. But it is still mentioned repeatedly on the online forms, causing many to believe it still applies. In small print on the Myki web site does it say “Please note that the administration fee mentioned on some of…

New stations at South Morang, Cardinia Road and Lynbrook opened yesterday, which is great news. At Lynbrook a community event drew a big crowd, and just for the event, toilets were provided. Alas, they were taken away on the back of a truck afterwards. South Morang is a Premium station, but the others aren’t. With…

Many of the remaining problems with Myki relate to its coexistence with Metcard: old slow gates, tram and bus readers not knowing where the vehicle is (because drivers can’t enter trip details). But some station readers have problems as well. This one had apparently decided to reboot itself at 3:12pm… and still hadn’t recovered almost…

This must be a textbook example of how to confuse people: Westona station has converted to Myki, so no Metcards are for sale here. What’s the only information on display next to the Myki vending machine? A poster all about Metcard, including a list of those Metcard fares that you can’t buy. Help our campaign…

From today Public Transport Victoria takes over from Metlink. With luck they do a little better at the information provided to Craigieburn line passengers during disruptions. When disruptions happen — as one did last Monday — no information is provided for Coolaroo station users about where their replacement buses stop. Coolaroo is also still missing…

As publicised last week, a blitz of maintenance is happening on the rail network in coming months, meaning many weekend shutdowns and replacement bus services. Regular commuter Terry sent us this picture: the replacement buses stop a kilometre from Officer station. Admittedly there’s not much around Officer station – many people might find the stop…

On Thursday the Transport Ticketing Authority issued a media release with some good advice for new users of Myki: “touch, don’t swipe, touch, don’t wave, touch don’t rub, touch, don’t tap”. The Myki web site, however, managed to turn this message backwards, highlighting on the home page the completely wrong advice to “swipe, not touch…

Next weekend, the Grand Prix weekend is one of the train network’s busiest. No wonder, as big public events are what public transport does best, and organisers quite rightly encourage people not to drive. Apart from efficiently moving crowds, it’s also a chance to show off the system to occasional users who (if they have…

What have the train carriages in Perth, Adelaide, Brisbane and Sydney, as well as Melbourne’s trams all got, that Melbourne’s trains don’t? Internal carriage numbers. On suburban trains in every other state in Australia, the carriage numbers are marked on the inside, which makes it easier for passengers to report issues such as vandalism, faults…