Re: Night Trams
David Penna (djpenna@one.net.au)
Wed, 08 Apr 1998 12:31:25 -0700
Mike Alexander wrote:
>
> Hi All,
>
> I found the following on the Met homepage:
> What are other people's experiences with the Night Trams? We seemed to hear
> very little about them, both in this newsgroup, and in official publicity.
>
> Here are a few of my observations:
>
> From the few times which I used them, fare evasion seemed to be rife;
> hardly anybody bought a ticket that I noticed. Anyone know what the
> official figures were? One tram a friend of mine caught stopped in the
> middle of the Light Rail line, and the driver turned out all the lights and
> just sat there until everybody had bought a ticket! I think they should
> enforce front-door boarding and let the driver sell tickets.
>
> For the first few weeks, the trams were flying along at 60 - 70 km/h. It
> was great, and I got home in no time. Then, it seems that someone must have
> had a word, because they all seemed to slow down to their daytime speeds.
> This is plainly ridiculous, as there is hardly any traffic on the roads at
> 3am.
>
> The advertising of the service was almost non-existant. There were posters
> at some Railway Stations, a couple of ads in In-Press magazine, and a small
> sticker applied to the tram stop sign. No timetables or frequency
> information was placed on the stops. Interestingly, when I caught a tram
> home at about 3am on the last day of operation, the maintenance crews were
> out peeling the stickers from the signs (at 3am!!!).
>
> Even the Met homepage had no timetables and only an oblique reference to
> the service.
>
> All in all, I thought it was a great service, but extremely poorly promoted
> and with virtually no enforcement of ticket sales. I really hope that it
> comes back next year, and some of the shortcomings are fixed.
>
> Regards,
>
> Mike Alexander
> (malex@bigfoot.com)
I never caught the Night Tram running on that particular route...but here
are a few comments anyway ....
What is wrong with running Night Trams all year on the more popular
routes anyway? (Like Sydney does with the more popular bus routes). If
they were scheduled depart at certain times (maybe even at 1.5 hourly
intervals) - and people knew about them, then its logical that people
would use them.
You only have to see the last number 19 (North Coburg) tram for the
night. By the time it has reached Lonsdale Street (at least on Friday
and Saturday nights) it is a crush worse than any peak hour tram. That
says to me that there is a demand for the service.