Re: V/Line Pass- Railways now forgotten in Government Policy?

[wajohns@tpgi.com.au (bill johnston)]

In article <01bf062a$0a6d6dc0$f72d11cb@rodsmith>, rodsmith@werple.net.au 
says...
>
>The improvement in off-peak services was only a part recom
>pense for the
>withdrawal of two-person crews.  It was not uniform across
> all routes, and
>applied to only part of the day.
>Likewise the improvements on Sundays were left for 6 years
> to implement,
>and again did not apply all day.
>
>The record of two Kennett governments was that reality did
> not match
>rhetoric.
>* The 3 hour zone 1 ticket was cut to 2 hour, with no pric
>e reduction. 
>Voters forgot that within 3 years.
>* The promise at the first election was for free transport
> in the cbd.  The
>implementation was City Circle trams.



>* Mon.-Fri. services were cut in the earliest months; henc
>e quite easy to
>reinstate some before an election.



In case anyone has any doubts about this. The St Albans peak service was cut by 
removing a direct service without any compensating change to the timetable.of 
the rest of the service. (This was part of the policy that all trains run 
around the loop). We are still waiting for the reinstatement of the missing 
train. There is still, 6 years later, a 27 minute gap in the weekday peak St 
Albans service. The service is worse than the Saturday service at the same 
time. The services involved are the 16:21 then the 16:48. There have been 
occassions when the 16:21 was cancelled would you believe. Of course I always 
remember the occassion I just missed the 16:05 by the paint on the door handles 
and then had to suffer the cancellation of the 16:21. I complained of course 
but nothing changed.

There is no way this could be called a peak hour service. There is no way it 
called be called a service at all.

Bill Johnston

   
>The promise for five years was that a common Sunday and Sa
>turday timetable
>would be introduced.  The implementation was a meagre mid 
>morning to late
>afternoon implementation.
>* Trains still don't serve the loop on Sunday evenings.
>* Flagstaff is not served at weekends; Parliament is not s
>erved on Sundays
>- but trains were not accelerated.
>* Evening services still have 30 minute headways.  Try lea
>ving a theatre,
>city meeting or another train and waiting for a connection
>.
>
>* We got the customer-unfriendly ticket-selling and monito
>ring system:
>designed to give maximum benefits to management by convert
>ing all patrons
>into potential criminals.
>I am fully in favour of electronic ticketing systems, with
> no conductors on
>trams and with many stations unattended; I travel on syste
>ms like this in
>other countries extensively.  However, the ticketing syste
>m should work. 
>Remember, the actual fare and ticket structure is independ
>ent of the
>selling mechanism, and was introduced by Labor 10 years ag
>o.
> - All ticket machines should sell all ticket types (inclu
>ding on tram
>ones).
> - Tvms at all selling points should accept notes (with au
>xiliary coin-only
>machines at busy spots).
> - Change should be given beyond the $10 limit.
> - Multiple purchases should be possible in a single trans
>action.
> - The requirement should be for a ticket to be validated 
>once; thereafter
>no further poking should be required.
> - There should be no barriers.
>
>Unfortunately, ERG's shoddy system is attracting interest 
>elsewhere,
>probably because of its management bias at the expense of 
>customers.
>
>
>
>-- 
>Regards
>Roderick Smith
>Rail News Victoria Editor
>
>Michael Walker <walker@hotkey.net.au> wrote in article 
>> >Kennett is far too much of a smug git for my liking, bu
>t you have to
>face
>> >it - the improvements to off-peak services over the las
>t 5 years is way
>> more
>> >than Labor ever did as far as service improvements duri
>ng their time in
>> >office. Mind you, you could argue that the loss of cond
>uctors and
>guards,
>> >privatisation and ticket machines outweighs that.
>> Yes, the improvements to off peak services have been imp
>ressive. Even the
>> ones before the most recent ones were an improvement on 
>the labour years.
>> However, the reduction in peak services introduced in th
>e summer after
>Jeff
>> was re-elected still exists. The summer timetable was in
>troduced as was
>the
>> norm, except it was unusual in that there were hand out 
>broadsheet
>> timetables this time, an apparent improvement over previ
>ous years where
>the
>> only evidence of a summer timetable was the yellow timet
>ables in the
>poster
>> frames. The timetables had some trains marked with an 'A
>' as those which
>> were to run from the 11th January on as well as the othe
>rs. Since then
>there
>> have been some revisions to peak hour services but the n
>umber of trains
>run
>> is similar to that timetable from 11th Jan of whichever 
>year it was. We
>> still haven't returned to the number of peak hour trains
> from under the
>> previous Labour government, nor the number of peak hour 
>express trains on
>at
>> least the Hurstbridge line.
>> Mind you, I'm not dead against ticket machines and priva
>tisation, just
>the
>> haphazard near enough is good enough way it was done...
>



  -----------== Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News ==----------
   http://www.newsfeeds.com       The Largest Usenet Servers in the World!
------== Over 73,000 Newsgroups - Including  Dedicated  Binaries Servers ==-----