Re: [Melb] Yarra Trams - first move...

[Vaughan Williams <ender2000@my-deja.com>]

I don't think its a good idea at all for a number of reasons.

/rant on

First point, there are about three tram stops in melbourne that should
be removed and several that should be relocated slightly (to other side
of intersections and other minor tweaks). YT wants to remove 50.

Second point, they've picked the wrong ones. For example, the one
outside Safeway in Smith St is the busiest stop in Smith St, and along
High St Northcote for about a 3km stretch they've just gone through and
killed every second stop.

Third point, if they were serious about speeding trams up they'd go for
priority at traffic lights, enforcement of the fairway system and in a
few places, right turn bans. This could save them up to 30-40% off
travel time, no exaggeration.

Fourth point, trams are designed for closely spaced stops. if theres
nobody waiting at a stop, the tram currently doesn't stop there. If you
reduce the number of stops you get more people waiting at each stop and
therefore spend more time at each individual stop (trams are slow to
board because passengers have to negotiate three steps). Removing stops
would produce only marginal time savings and the trade off is in-
vehicle time to increased average walking time to get to the stops. So
any time saving (which wouldn't be much anyway) is wiped out by having
to walk further.

Fifth point, the extra walking is hard on elderly and disabled tram
users.

Sixth point, the most stupid part of the plan is the removal of the
tram from Acland St, St Kilda entirely.

What seems to have happened is that YT have asked for some advice from
a road engineer on how to speed up their trams (that or Vicroads or
RACV or some other manifestation of demons rang them up and lobbied
them). Because road engineers are good at building roads but not much
good at planning transport systems or operating a tram system, they
would have come up with a silly simplistic solution like this one.

Recently National Bus removed a major stop in Lygon St because, we
think, the road engineers from Melbourne City Council rang them up and
complained that cars get held up for a few seconds while the bus stops.
Any public authority with any guts at all would have told them to get
fucked and Risson would probably have bayoneted them.

We think something similar has happened here - whoever YT consulted has
once again decided that cars are far more important than trams and so
trams stops should as far as possible be removed where they are on
narrow streets without safety zones (notice that many of the stops
targeted ARE in such narrow streets).

/rant off

Vaughan

> I think this is a good idea, as ling as there aren't any stops
removed where
> disabled people use them etc as they said on the radio, but I doubt
that
> they would remove those ones - they are trying to improve their image
here,
> not lower it!!


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