Re: Melbourne's poor Met service

["David Proctor" <daproc@spam_this.umpires.com>]

Sounds Like SillyRail in Sydney

Roderick Smith wrote in message <01be6473$7c7658e0$762e11cb@rodsmith>...
>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