Re: [Melb] Hillside Trains takeover: farce?

[paul@xenu.ee.mu.oz.au (Paul Dwerryhouse)]

Jennifer Richmond <richmond@melbpc.org.au> writes:

>MTE have said that these will be added on weekends.

That makes it worse. We desperately need more _weekday_ trains.

>No, but is that MTE's fault?

I'm not just directing my comments at MTE. But frankly I don't think that
they've offered enough.

>How are they pulling the wool over people's eyes?

"130 extra trains per week", at first glance seems good. But as I pointed
out, it's not really that much. And it's even worse if the extra services
are only on weekends...

>So you'd rather no station be open, rubbish strewn about everywhere, all 
>trains in service, with a train every 10 mins. The 10 min frequency would be 
>kicked to the shizenhouse with all trains being in service as they would 
>invariably break down as there would be no time for regular maintenance.

Simple solution for that - buy more trains. Upgrade the _system_ if it can't
cope with the frequency. Not just waste more money on silly diversions like
"improving stations" (ie, fix the problem, not the symptoms).

Look at the logic - I do not use the public transport system for the stations.
I use it for the transport. If the amount of time that someone has to spend
at a station is minimised, it doesn't matter what facilities the station
has. 

>An you imagine the chaos at FSS/In the loop if that were to occur? Some lines
>couldn't handle a 3 min headway. Even if they could, trains would creep along,
>checked at signals.

I remember a time when the Ringwood line had several runs of trains at 3 minute
intervals in the morning peak.

>I'm not saying that your ideas are bad, they are very good. They just need 
>a bit of refinement. My personal dream is a 30 min service to every location 
>between 0000 and 0430 every day. I have been in the city when the last train 
>leave and with all night shopping/crown/nightclubs, the nightriders are just 
>not good enough any more.

Hmmm. I could not have had a better example of what a backwater that we live
in as when, upon arriving back from a trip around Europe having experienced
the various Metro systems of Berlin, Paris and London, I found myself waiting
for 10 minutes for a train in peak times at Heatherdale station. Admittedly 
they were running late, but it still wasn't good enough.

...Paul


--
Paul Dwerryhouse                                        paul@xenu.ee.mu.oz.au
"The growing use of e-mail, not to mention Web-page publishing, threatens to 
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