Re: [Melb] Hillside Trains takeover: farce?

["LooseLips" <danv@primus.com.au>]

New trains and services are part of the contract which will be funded by the
government anyway...

What a load of bullshit about the new companies providing these!


Paul Dwerryhouse <paul@xenu.ee.mu.oz.au> wrote in message
7n9lur$npu$1@mulga.cs.mu.OZ.AU">news:7n9lur$npu$1@mulga.cs.mu.OZ.AU...
>
> I've been looking through the local rag and spotted an article on the
> awarding of Hillside trains to MTE. Now while it didn't actually tell me
> anything I hadn't already read in The Age (so, what _is_ the point of
local
> papers, anyway?), I decided to do a few mental calculations...
>
> MTE claims it will upgrade four stations to "premium" status (ie, it will
> put the staff back at these stations for the whole day, and re-open the
> toilets), refurbish and improve waiting rooms and add 130 services per
week.
>
> Now, let's see... 130 extra services per week. Let's be generous, and
assume
> that all 130 services will be added on working days... that means 26 extra
> services a day. Now, divide this across five railway lines (Ringwood,
> Glen Waverley, Hurstbridge, Epping, Alamein) ... that brings us to an
> average of 5 extra services a day per line.
>
> Not much, is it? Probably doesn't even bring us back to the service levels
that
> we had pre-Kennett.
>
> Did anyone in MTE or the Victorian Government consider that if they
upgraded
> the frequency of rail services considerably, they wouldn't have to spend
extra
> money on refurbishing the waiting rooms because PEOPLE WOULDN'T HAVE TO
WAIT
> THERE!!!  (Please excuse my shouting. I'm rather worked up about the way
> marketing keeps pulling the wool over people's eyes).  Honestly, I
couldn't
> give a rats' about the state of the the railway stations.  If the trains
ran
> more often, we'd all have to spend a lot less time there...
>
> I would like to see a frequency of 3 minutes between trains in peak times
and
> 10 minutes during non-peak times. Cut the trains in half, if need be, but
> do something about it. Smaller more-frequent trains are a much better
> proposition than long trains with millennia between services...
>
> ...Paul
>
>
> --
> Paul Dwerryhouse
paul@xenu.ee.mu.oz.au
> "The growing use of e-mail, not to mention Web-page publishing, threatens
to
> reverse the trend towards illiteracy among the supposedly educated without
at
> the same time improving their spelling". -- Michael Swaine, Dr. Dobb's
Journal