That’s the site of Student Village isn’t it? Last time I heard it was to become a residential development.
Correct - has been abandoned for a good 4 or 5 years now.
I get the short term appeal of selling Essendon, but it’s a good location for a depot, not too far from the city. Not many of those left on the network. Imo they should re-open fitzroy depot again and take over the bus area too. Frees up some space in Southbank for additional trams, can run some 109s from there with E-Class
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I know there are proposals in Sydney to turn the Neutral Bay and Waverley bus depots into underground depots and selling off the airspace, could the same potentially be done with a tram depot?
Busses can traverse gradients much steeper than a tram, that’d be a no go I’d think.
How would selling off airspace change gradients at ground level?
EDIT: Nevermind, I missed “underground.” But it wouldn’t need to be underground, just ground level.
new CAT Bus route for Perth and changes to 1/2 of the existing routes.
Current Route
New Route (unsure of legitimacy, pulled from bus Australia)
https://www.busaustralia.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=92069&sid=a4e3eb255afc039be23a40c9f0eb0025
Major changes include no northbridge loop back on James St to William Street being and a loop being now a linear path for the old Blue CAT.
I am a CAT Bus purist, where it originally is a one way circuit and not a linear bus route.
The original Route also went to the mount hospital, on the foot of kings park on Mounts Bay Road. Sad to see it go and change so drastically.
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Has to be a good return on investment for the City of Perth ratepayers and car-park users that effectively contribute to the operational cost of CAT buses. It’ll be interesting to see how busy the purple CAT gets - keep in mind this route only exists now because UWA and the adjacent area of Crawley was transferred to the City of Perth some years ago.
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Interesting point, I’m not sure with how well it’ll go either because it directly competes with some of the Route the 96 and 97 run on and indirectly with the 950.
I do like the idea of more CATs - especially extending to UWA, Kings Park and Matagarup, implementation is different.
Returning to the Blue CAT, I find huge value with going out on Friday and Saturday from home and work, I am definitely in the minority, I do take the James street route often, once a week if not more
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There’s also public feedback regarding the changes to the 107 and the 340 merged with the 353.
107:We're seeking your views on proposed changes to Route 107 | My Say Transport
340/353:We're seeking your views on proposed changes to routes 340 and 353 | My Say Transport
And Swan Transit/Transit Systems Australia has won the contract to run PTA WA’s Regional Town Bus Service in Kalgoorlie taking over Path Transit/Keolis Downer, effective from 10th October 2021.
Engineers working for V/Line have expressed concerns that rail bridges built as part of the Andrews government’s level crossing removals program do not follow safety standards and are at risk of collapsing if a heavy train derails on them. However, LXRA insist that the structures are safe.
You’d hope that the engineers are wrong, because if a train derails on a Skyrail bridge and unfortunately collapses, there would be many casualties, as playgrounds for children, skate ramps, basketball courts, walking and cycling tracks etc., are located directly underneath.
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This is, for the most part, a beat up by the Herald Sun.
No freight services run at line speed in Melbourne, often limited to 25-30 km/h slower than passenger services to accomodate the extra braking distance required for a longer consist. Note the distinction between ‘Engineers working for V/Line’ vs ‘V/Line engineers’ - I’m fairly certain there’s little-to-no engineering work done in-house by V/Line now.
If there was an issue with U-trough viaducts, no freight services would have been running between Caulfield and Dandenong for several years at this point.
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Fair point. I only changed the wording because I didn’t want to copy the article word for word.
Wasn’t having a go at you, don’t sweat - it’s a distinction that the article itself doesn’t make.
For what it’s worth, if standards enforced post-Granville have been watered down as suggested, then that is a concern and definitely in need of review - viaducts, embankments, tunnels, trenches or otherwise.
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Yay for quad-tracking and straightening out the Beenleigh/GC line. Probably the biggest and most necessary improvement to the network after CRR.
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def needs to be done before the olympics - now we just need to get line duplicaton on the sunshine coast line
The design and construction contract are expected to be awarded in mid-2022, but there’s no full timeline beyond that yet.
Well overdue. The project page mentions that five level crossings will be removed but I think there are actually more along the Beenleigh/Gold Coast line. Those crossings should all be removed before 2032.
[Perth]
Some updates regarding the 2-zone fare, a Golden SmartRider will allows one to travel free within the Transperth/PTA WA network for a year and so on.
This week, Volvo Buses has launched its electric bus chassis product ‘BZL’ in which the first few units will be delivered to Transperth/PTA WA as a demonstrator. Ironically, they were also the launch customer of the B8RLEA back in late-2014.
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