FW: snippets, Fri.11.8.17
  Roderick Smith

-----Original Message-----
From: Roderick Smith [mailto:rodsmith@werple.net.au]
Sent: Friday, 11 August 2017 12:03 PM
To: 'transportdownunder@yahoogroups.com'
Subject: snippets, Fri.11.8.17


170811F Melbourne 'Herald Sun' - route 109 stop 126 Montague, dumped bike.

170811F Melbourne 'Age':
- 19490811Th Melbourne 'Age' - 7 week NSW coal strike.
- Legoland, Chadstone - Flinders St.
- Richmond Xtrapolis.

Roderick.

Metro Twitter, Thurs.10.8.17
12.01 Our call centre is unable to take calls. Please see our website/app for info. Techs are working to fix the issue. We'll update when they do!
- 16.57 What a surprise, another day another fault.
- 6.19 Fri.11, still.

Fri.11.8
8.28 Our call centre is unable to take calls. Please check our website/app for info. We’ll let you know when the issue is resolved.

Melbourne Express: Friday, August 11, 2017.
Today's Mystery Melbourne was Legoland in Chadstone. Paul N was first with the answer via email, Jamahl W was first on Twitter.
Recap: Lord mayor Robert Doyle has called those yellow oBikes "clutter".
The dockless shared bicycles are popping up all over Melbourne, and are increasingly being left in curious locations such as up trees, on lamposts or in the Yarra.
"We work hard to keep the city free of clutter. They are clutter and that must be fixed," he said.
What's your take on the bikes? Let me know Readers so far have been divided on the topic (see posts below).
"I'd have to say I agree with Doyle (can't believe I'm saying that)," he writes.
"Frankly, I'm tired of seeing them left on various footpaths in and around the city, either left where their journey ended, or occupying public bike parks."
"As a keen cyclist, I'm all for more bikes and increasing the amount of trips made on two wheels, however we have a better solution in the already established blue bikes."
Here is what was in The Age on this day in 1949:
* Tram fares were set to rise.
* On this day in 1949, a seven week coal miners strike was about to end. The miners' union leadership was heavily influenced by the Communist Party of Australia, and went on strike demanding pay increases, reduced hours and long service leave provisions. At the height of the strike, the Chifley Government used troops to break up the industrial action.
Quite a few readers agree with Lord mayor Robert Doyle's view that oBikes are "clutter", but not everyone is against those yellow share bikes.
Guy L says: "My son and I love them. We use them to go from Victoria Street to the MCG every weekend."
Meanwhile, another reader writes: "Why don't we worry about the tens of thousands of cars dumped all around the place daily. I find them dumped on the roads, footpaths, driveways and bicycle lanes. They are everywhere and waste 20 times the space of one bicycle!"
I don't know if "tens of thousands of cars" are dumped, but there are abandoned cars around. Take this one in North Fitzroy. @hipstergeddon has been watching this one for three days now and is waiting patiently for a passing hipster to spray paint the thing (like this one).
I'm spitballing crazy-Friday-morning-coffee-induced-ideas now, but if anyone is free to do some oBike-related fieldwork for me in the city from 9am today, please let me know.
I've been getting some interesting responses from Express readers about oBikes.
The Age reported on the problems with oBikes back in June, and since then there have been several stories about the bikes turning up in all sorts of odd places.
One reader writes: "While I have personally used oBikes and love the idea, I must agree they have become a nuisance and a hazard. I've found oBikes thrown around occupying precious pedestrian space, I've seen them thrown outside my building's entrance and sometimes at the edge of roads creating hazard for car drivers."
"The kind of damage they receive from such poor storage practises and mishandling also makes them risky to ride on. Compared to Melbourne bikes that have proper pods and maintained regularly."
"While I appreciate the innovation, some ideas just don't work, creating too many issues when unregulated and lack infrastructure in this way. oBikes either need to go (banned) or told to invest in their own pods."
"Many of these bikes are used for one way trips. They're left where nobody would think of, and then don't get re-used. Does anybody collect these strays?"
"There was one I saw in Southbank a couple of weeks ago, sans pedals. The same bike wound up being tossed into the Yarra at Queensbridge; it was still at the base of the bridge as of last Friday."
Richmond residents say the yellow oBikes are clogging footpaths and bike racks. Photo: Paul Jeffers Lord mayor Robert Doyle has called those yellow oBikes "clutter".
The dockless shared bicycles are popping up all over Melbourne, and are increasingly being left in curious locations such as up trees, on lamposts or in the Yarra.
"We work hard to keep the city free of clutter. They are clutter and that must be fixed," he said.
What's your take on the bikes? Let me know Read more: Are yellow oBikes taking over our footpaths?
oBikes strewn across Melbourne Australia's newest bike sharing system allows riders to park bikes wherever they want, including abandoned in the middle of the footpath.
<www.theage.com.au/victoria/melbourne-express-friday-august-11-2017-20170809-gxsmgo.html>

August 10 2017 Women's fear of certain public spaces cannot be ignored.
Ask any woman about her experiences of public space and you're likely to be met with a visible bristle as she remembers all the times she was subjected to unwanted harassment, abuse or even physical violence.
Public space can be dangerous for everybody (and in fact, men's risk of violence is drastically higher in such places than it is in domestic settings), but it tends to be dangerous for women in very specific ways.
Public transport is one of the biggest areas of safety concern for girls and women. Photo: Stocksy .
Unfortunately, this risk to women is also countered by a mistrust of women's testimonies. When we talk about our experiences of harassment and violence, we are often told we're either overreacting or lying outright. The scepticism shown to women (not only from men but also from other women) crosses between both the private and public spheres, but the latter is especially galling in a society that uses the threat of Stranger Danger to try to control women's behaviour.
Simply put, we are told to exercise caution in public because of "bad people", but we are disbelieved when we take charge of our narratives and offer accounts of the very things we are told to be afraid of.
Public transport is one of the biggest areas of safety concern for girls and women, with many of us going out of our way to avoid certain lines or stations particularly after dark. But our fears aren't limited solely to the use of public transport – access to and from stations and stops is also a cause for concern, especially if that access involves walking down dimly-lit streets.
I have friends who avoid walking home from public transport stops after certain times, choosing to catch taxis instead. Leaving aside the financial burden this places on women, the risk of harm to women who use taxis and rideshare services has also been well documented.
So for many of us, it becomes a coin toss between which scenario you think is less likely to see you come to harm, as opposed to actually being safe.
Again, it's difficult to discuss these issues openly without being met with extreme resistance. The mass social gaslighting that's always in operation whenever women discuss issues of safety and risk has convinced many of us that it's not worth it to speak openly about it.
Hotspot: Richmond station. Photo: Michael Clayton-Jones .
Instead, we share our information with each other along the grapevine. Don't catch this line at this time, avoid this station completely and beware this area right now because a guy just trailed me in his car as I was walking home.
In this way, women can clumsily collate the information we need to make more informed choices about our safety without having to run the risk of being mocked for caring about it in the first place.
This is partly why Plan Australia's Free To Be project, analysis from which was released on Thursday, is so powerful. With the help of XYX Lab, the organisation mapped the experiences of girls and women using public transport across Victoria over two months in late 2016 to collate a more comprehensive picture of the areas that were considered "happy" or "sad" for commuters' use.
More than 1300 pins and 600 comments were left on the interactive map, with the vast majority of respondents (72 per cent) aged below 30.
Many had experienced incidents of sexual harassment and/or abuse. One respondent recounted the time she was chased along the Richmond train platform by a group of drunk men. Another talked about being on board a train while a man stared at her intensely. When she disembarked at Flinders Station (a major interchange) he followed her and boarded her next train. "No one helped me," she said.
Other "sad" stations noted were Brunswick, Jewell, Footscray and Box Hill, with respondents citing a heightened sense of caution particularly where lighting is dim and uniformed safety officers were lacking.
Addressing this lack of safety for women isn't just vital because of the current and immediate impact it has on lives. If public spaces are dismissive or hostile to women's specific safety needs, women will avoid using that space. It's an insidious way to undermine women's right to participate in public life in the same way men do, because the playing field is uneven from the get go.
This isn't just my own feminist take – it's the findings of almost every major research study done on how public space accommodates women's safety needs.
Australia lags behind other countries when it comes to addressing how public space can either exacerbate gender inequality or improve outcomes for those marginalised by it, so the work of XYX Lab is a welcome (and long overdue) response that must be capitalised on by policymakers and urban planners​.
Fundamentally, the drive to design cities with the needs of girls and women in mind is a way to advance gender equality, rather than shift privilege from one group to another. The United Nations recognised how important these considerations were way back in 2001, stating in a report: "when a space is occupied by women and girls, it is also occupied by more people in general."
It is not up to girls and women to fit themselves into a society that was traditionally built for men who dominated public space. It's up to a progressive, advanced society to recognise that the landscape has changed, and adjust itself accordingly.
Clementine Ford is an author and Fairfax Media columnist.
Related Articles:
We urgently need to make public transport safer for women.
Sexual violence harms all women, including non-victims.
<www.theage.com.au/lifestyle/news-and-views/opinion/clementine-ford-womens-fear-of-certain-public-spaces-cannot-be-ignored-20170810-gxt8f4.html>

Lord Mayor Robert Doyle threatens to ban dockless bikes in Melbourne.
Herald Sun August 10, 2017.
MELBOURNE Lord Mayor Robert Doyle has threatened to ban the dockless share bikes that are scattered across the city.
“We work hard to keep the city free of clutter. They are clutter and that must be fixed,” Cr Doyle said.
The council and operators of the oBike scheme have been in talks for weeks to fix the problem but Cr Doyle said if no solution could be found they would be axed.
Amsterdam, a city with a rich cycling tradition, this week banned the dockless bikes because they were taking up too many scarce parking spaces.
An oBike stranded on top of portable toilets in Prahran. Pic: imgur.
An oBike taped to a lamp post on Dodds St, Southbank. Picture: Martin Sherwood.
An oBike left on a tree on Stubbs St, Kensington..
Cr Doyle said the City of Melbourne may take a similar stance.
“We are working with oBike but if an agreed solution is not found, this is the track we will have to take.’’
Inner-city residents have taken to social media to vent their frustration with the bike-share initiative.
The Singapore-based company launched in Melbourne on June 15, starting in the CBD and spreading from South Yarra to Carlton.
OBike Australia marketing head Chethan Rangaswamy said he was hopeful of finding a solution with the council.
But he said encouraging users to properly store the bikes was crucial.
“We have to have education around how to park the bikes in a specific manner after usage,’’ he said.
He said most cities’ modern transport plans had bike-sharing schemes as part of its mix.
Pedestrians have expressed anger on the oBike Australia Facebook page, leaving a chain of complaints about bikes left cluttering up footpaths and public areas.
Unlike Melbourne Bike Share, which has designated pick-up and drop-off points, oBike works on the premise of dockless locking, meaning bikes can be left anywhere convenient.
But the ride-sharing cycles have been found taped up a Southbank lamppost, left up a tree in Kensington, dumped on an Ascot Vale garage roof and thrown into the Yarra.
OBike has a team designated to fetching the heavy single-speed bikes from inappropriate drop-off locations. It is now offering unlimited free rides in August.
Free rides had initially been introduced from June 15 to June 21, the company’s first week in Melbourne.
OBike has brought competition to a market already struggling to make inroads in Victoria, with the Andrews Government boosting the Melbourne Bike Share to by $4.9 million in April.
CONCERN OVER OBIKE PRICING.
‘UBER FOR BIKES’ COMES TO CITY.
5 OF THE BEST BICYCLE RIDES IN MELBOURNE.
CLOGGED BIKE RISKING CYCLISTS’ LIVES.
<www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/lord-mayor-robert-doyle-threatens-to-ban-dockless-bikes-in-melbourne/news-story/4207085e7468b39367f55f2e79d3d996>

Box Hill skyline expected to rival capital cities as developers snag prime real estate.
Whitehorse Leader August 11, 2017.
•Skyscraper plan for suburban skyline.
•Whitehorse Towers reach peak.
•CBD limits a boom for suburban towers.
•Tallest building outside CBD ahead of schedule.
ANOTHER prime location in Box Hill has been snapped up by a developer, this time for a cool $22.55 million.
The 1972sq m BP petrol station at 843 Whitehorse Rd, on the corner of Wellington Rd, lies within Box Hill’s major development precinct, and sold for a land rate of $11,400 per square metre.
The 36-storey Whitehorse Towers development is nearing completion. Picture: Mark Stewart Savills agent Clinton Baxter said the property had been the focus of intense interest from numerous Australian and Asia-based developers, with the long-term owner ultimately electing to accept an offer made in private negotiations.
“Box Hill is the most dynamic and rapidly evolving suburb of Melbourne — the transformation occurring currently is absolutely breathtaking,” Mr Baxter said.
“Within three-five years, Box Hill will have a more impressive skyline than some capital cities such as Hobart or Canberra,” he said.
The Whitehorse Towers rooftop, which offers sweeping views of the Melbourne skyline. Picture: Nicole Garmston Mr Baxter’s colleague Nick Peden said that “with most major sites throughout Box Hill having been sold to developers over the past two years, a genuine shortage of suitable sites for high-rise development is starting to occur, pushing up land value throughout the suburb.”
The vendor was a family that had held the property for an extended period.
It is believed the site will likely be developed for a high-rise residential or hotel use.
Savills also recently sold 500 Station St, Box Hill (on the corner of Albion Rd) for $3.5 million.
500 Station St, Box Hill recently sold for $3.5 million.
The exhaust repair centre site received two offers within hours of going on sale and was sold by the end of the day.
Mr Baxter said that “the property was purchased by a Chinese development group, who know and understand Box Hill intimately”.
“They were in a hurry, and not prepared to wait a moment longer to purchase this strategic corner landholding,” Mr Baxter said.
“The vendor was blown away, he and his wife are absolutely staggered by what took place” Mr Heatherich said.
The site was zoned for industrial use.
Skyscraper window cleaners battle heavy winds.
<www.heraldsun.com.au/leader/east/box-hill-skyline-expected-to-rival-capital-cities-as-developers-snag-prime-real-estate/news-story/7bd3574f359c05af1bc72c479aba174c>

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