Melbourne's poor Met service

["Roderick Smith" <rodsmith@werple.net.au>]

On Sat.27.2, the Met was unable to transport people from Bayswater at 5.35
to Spencer St in time to catch the 7.05 Steamrail Sea Lake tour.  Because
of track occupation at Ringwood, buses to Mitcham left ahead of advertised
departure times.  The bus replacing the 5.47 had left by 5.35.  Because of
infrequent service, the next bus was 40 min later; it failed to connect.

On Sun.28.2, the Met took 40 min longer than usual to transport RNV patrons
from Brighton Beach to Surrey Hills following the tour to mark the 40th
anniversary of the closure of the VR St Kilda - Elwood tram.

Normally an up Sandringham would connect at Richmond with a down Surrey
Hills.  Because of bridge work between Richmond and South Yarra,
Sandringham trains were connecting with Dandenong & Frankston trains.  Up
Frankston trains miss down Belgrave trains by 2 min at Richmond, forcing a
wait of 38 min.  We could have overcome this by taking a taxi from South
Yarra to Burnley, but the Sandringham trains were retimed to run later. 
The hapless passengers to the city still had to wait 20 min at South Yarra,
as the connecting up Frankston for the 20.23 ex Brighton Beach (the retimed
20.11) was itself 20 min late.

There are three solutions:
* Keep an infrequent service, but time it to have connections.
* Provide a more frequent service, so a missed connection is less of a
problem.
* Provide a double-frequency service at times of trackwork disruptions.

Melbourne's Met certainly is no longer a system, but it isn't a service
either.

Regards
Roderick Smith
Rail News Victoria Editor