The Sprinter unit can’t stable at Seaford because it doesn’t have diesel refueling facility. It has to go all the way back to West Melbourne facility at Dudley Street, opposite Festival Hall.
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Ta, makes sense.
South Australian transport minister Corey Wingard has ruled out a new rail line between Adelaide CBD and Adelaide Hills, saying it is too costly and not viable.
https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/messenger/adelaide-hills/hills-to-adelaide-train-link-not-viable-says-corey-wingard/news-story/3361ff45a730374fae1e409f11b69415
Footage of the V/Line V’Locity train crashing into the heritage level crossing barriers at Lydiard Street North, Ballarat in May 2020 is now doing the rounds online.
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Far out! That’s so lucky that nobody else was injured or killed, had an incident like that happened in the middle of the day that could have been catastrophic. I love how black boxes can be used for checking the recordings of everything in the lead up to an incident like this - another great Aussie invention!
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All I can think with that is…
Thanks Dan.
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You’re welcome!?!?! 
Don’t know what Japanese ladies dancing to diarrhea has to do with level crossing accidents but I’ll take the compliment.
Public transport fares in New South Wales will rise by 1.5% across the next 12 months, with Transport Minister Andrew Constance saying that the state is keeping in line with inflation.
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Yeah, inflation my arse.
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Money grabbing pigs more like.
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On a cold and wet Sydney day, with nothing much to see at the movies, I took a train ride from the city to Liverpool and back this afternoon (1 hr each way).
With my phone and headphones for entertainment, it was actually quite nice watching the world go by, and particularly seeing cars stuck in peak hour traffic with the train rolling past serenely 
It was a very cheap way to fill in two hours (as I got on the same train at Liverpool to come back so I didn’t need to tap on, tap off there), it only cost me $1.26 return on my Opal card.
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[Perth]
It’s been announced that a major disruption not long after the end-of-the-year festive season is on the cards for the Mandurah Line to facilitate works on the Thornlie-Cockburn Link.
The brand new railcar manufacturing facility in Midland is offically opened on WA Day in which the production of the new C-series trains is now underway.
[Brisbane]
Comes as the last bus manufactured by Volvo and Volgren has finally handed over to Brisbane City Council, marking a 12 year end as they moved on to Yutong’s for their electric bus supply contract which does not support local businesses in my view given that it’s a Chinese company like BYD (Although Volgren had collaborated with BYD to create an electric bus for Sydney and Melbourne but at least the body is made in Australia).
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According to the WA government’s Building for Tomorrow website, its initial advice is:
If you travel on the Mandurah Line regularly please start to prepare by considering alternative working arrangements or taking leave.
There will be replacement buses during the Mandurah Line closure during the Christmas/New Year period, but has the government made this suggestion to prevent congestion on the Kwinana Freeway, in anticipation that many people will drive to Perth CBD for work instead?
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As mentioned above, it also puts an end to local jobs with the Yutong’s being directly manufactured overseas in China. I’m glad the WA Government still maintains a good relationship with Volvo Buses and Volgren Australia which supports local manufacturing.
The Victorian Government announced this morning that Melbourne’s Night Bus service would expand from 21 to 34 routes from September, including new 24-hour weekend services on popular bus routes. Another 19 regular metropolitan bus routes will receive extra services throughout the day when their timetables are altered in September.
[Perth]
On Transperth/PTA buses, the sign indicating ‘Priority seating’ on the wheelchair bay has now changed to ‘Reserved for wheelchair users’. The new signage indicates that passengers sitting on the foldable seats should give their seat to wheelchair users whenever they board the bus.
A radical idea I have to change the face of public transport in Melbourne.
Scrap the entire tram network, to create more lanes for cars, and protected bike lanes.
Firstly with the trams. As much as we all love hopping on the tram and how rich a history they have in Melbourne, when you think about it, the tram tracks that are exclusively used by trams and not driven on by cars, are really just a waste of space given they’re only used something like once every eight minutes. Not to mention trams are sinister for clogging up traffic on some of the busiest roads, and are small in size compared to trains.
Tram tracks that were exclusively used by trams and not driven on by cars will be redesigned to a normal road, allowing for more room for cars to be driven.
But, here’s the catch. I would propose that the outer lanes closest to the pavements on most major roads (except narrow roads with minimal space of course) and freeways be repurposed into protected bike lanes. This would be welcome news to many drivers who won’t have to share the road with cyclists, and provides a safe space for cyclists to ride.
Thoughts on whether this could work? The health benefits would be immense from encouraging more people to cycle, and the number of lanes available to cars would probably roughly still be the same when you take some out for bike lanes and add more in from where the old tram tracks exclusively used by trams were positioned.
I direct you to this photo to show just how inefficient cars are at moving people on streets. This photo compares cars, bikes and buses but the bus will provide a similar estimation to the more modern of Melbourne’s trams. Cars are the worst method of travel through any CBD area and are typically only filled with 1 person, 2 if you’re lucky. It’s not about the number of lanes being available, it’s how efficient a chosen vehicle/mode is at moving people within that lane.
Original source: Road space: bus vs bikes vs cars – a famous photo recreated in Canberra – Daniel Bowen
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It’s radical, because it’s shit.
A tram can carry 300 people (E-Class). A tram lane can theoretically go at like 60 trams per hour. So that’s 18,000 people. No road can match that.
Also, just because a car lane looks full doesn’t mean it’s efficient use of space. A bike lane can look empty, because the vehicles using it can do so efficiently, same with trams. The only time a train line looks busy is when they get stopped outside of flinders st station, because it’s backed up (and becoming inefficient at handling the required traffic).
So when you see a clogged road or freeway, think about how much quicker it would be if the median had a train/tram/bus that could remove 50 to 1200 cars at a time (mode dependant) and what that would do for travel times overall, both car and PT.
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