-----Original Message-----
From: Roderick Smith [mailto:rodsmith@werple.net.au]
Sent: Thursday, 7 June 2018 2:02 PM
To: 'transportdownunder@yahoogroups.com'
Subject: Thurs.31.5.18 daily digest
Attached.
180530W Metro Twitter - Clifton Hill cable tram.
180531Th Melbourne 'Herald Sun':
- letters road &rail.
- tunnel stations editorial.
- Metro changes.
- Anglesea powerstation. at flickr, private, not grid.
180531Th 'SMH':
- train delays.
- metro.
180531Th Melbourne 'Age' - wet Flinders St at 7.00.
180531Th Metro Twitter:
- Altona coffee, inc. four by Jen Williams.
- Carnegie.
- Murrumbeena level crossing in 1979.
- tree removal.
- Caulfield - Westall bustitution.
- Carrum yoghurt.
- 180530W Mordialloc-Chelsea Leader - Carrum traders.
Timeline:
* 1914 regrading Clifton Hill - Northcote Loop Jn, but that wasn't grade separation.
* The Northcote cable-tram line had different physical standards from MTO lines. It terminated north of the creek bridge, until that bridge was widened. It then terminated between the bridge and the railway, but close to the MTO Clifton Hill line. Or, it crossed the railway, and terminated alongside MTO, but with no through connection or working. The work of installed a cable-railway crossing would not have been done just for 2 months: it must have been years earlier.
* Taken over by MTO, 1920.
* Railway electrification, 1921.
* Mar.1925, signalbox relocated to up side of line, down side of crossing (ie as in the photo).
* Physically compatible Mar.1925, with through working.
* Level-crossing abolition, new down line July 1925. Work complete 1926.
With such a tight timeline, it is conceivable that the photo was taken on the first day of through working.
Roderick.
Thurs.31.5.18 Metro Twitter
At Carrum this morning, grab a Chobani yoghurt until 9.00.
- Must have been gone already, nothing at 7.35.
- where's your Chobani?
- All I got were train replacement bus crashes.
- We got our fruit and yoghurt mornings mixed up.
- what are you doing to help Carrum traders stay in business?
We’re giving away free coffee at Altona until 9.00. Come and chat about the upcoming disruptions to the Werribee line as we remove Kororoit Creek Rd level crossing.
- 7.41 Free coffee at Altona station. Jen Williams.
- Lots of people catch the train here.
- And lots like coffee.
- Someone telling me she used to catch the train from Newport and didn't need a timetable. She's not happy about missing the train here and waiting 22 minutes.
- A 22 min freq would be a shock to the system after bullet trains every 8-15min Osaka to Tokyo.
- So generous. For someone who has a 3 h + trip home instead of 90 min one, I would prefer my Myki money back.
- I would be happy with a train at Bentleigh; you can keep your coffee.
6.08 Werribee/Williamstown lines: Major delays outbound with minor delays to some citybound services (a faulty train at South Kensington).
7.17 Parliament station: Because of an escalator fault at the northern (Lonsdale St) end of the station, there is limited access to/from platforms 3/4 at that end. A maintenance crew is currently working to fix the fault.
- 8.35 That's a bit confusing, because the Collins St side escalator is not working and the Lonsdale side is.
7.35 Will I get my $4.30 that you’ll sting me for arriving after 7.15 at Flinders Street because your pathetic company cancels the South Morang 6.24 just for fun?
- No.
15.31 Hurstbridge/South Morang lines: Trains are currently stopped in the North Richmond area with a trespasser on/near rail lines. Police are on-site.. Delays to 15 minutes anticipated.
17.04 Alamein/Belgrave/Lilydale lines: Minor delays (an earlier external power fault in the Camberwell area).
- 17.16 Can you least have airconditioned trains so this situation we are finding ourselves in isn’t so shit? [They are all airconditioned].
- 17.28 Logic: 'because of a power surge at Camberwell, this Alamein train will terminate at Riversdale', which is after Camberwell. Say that again.
- 17.34 The number of people who lost their mind when this was announced on the train...people need to calm their farms!
- 17.39 Stuck on a train outside Box Hill. No announcements. Can Kylie from the network control centre say something useful for once?
- 17.40 What announcements?
- 17.41 We do have some congestion for services arriving into Box Hill, are you on the move yet?
- 17.42 Why aren’t the trains moving? The announcement was that someone was ill...obviously that was a lie.
- 17.44 We have a train stopped at Bayswater with an ill passenger needing medical assistance, PSOs are on site assisting and an ambulance has been requested.
- 17.48 can we get an update on 17.19 from Parliament to Ferntree Gully; going slowly and no one knows why.
- 17.53 Appreciate things outside of your control, but passengers should be notified by the drivers on what's happening. Travelling at 2km/h with no announcement is pretty poor.
- 17.57 You made our train stop! You are crap.
- 17.58 Finally an announcement, 20 minutes later. Better late than never.
- 18.00 Can you update to major delays my train is 20min late.
- 18.00 I’ve heard as much.
- 18.00 What announcements? The muffled distorted ones from the driver or the non existent ones from the control centre?
- 18.04 It’s the same here depending on the line you take. Metro lies about the reason why they are delayed, hence there is anger at their incompetent nature.
- 18.08 we had just updated our delay time just before your tweet.
- 18.13 Major delays after the earlier power fault and now an ill passenger..
- 18.20 Not a single audible announcement since Flinders Street, unless the driver slaming the brakes on every 2 minutes and knocking everyone to the ground is code for ‘this is going to be a long trip’
- 18.30 Will I ever get to Ferntree Gully? This is now getting extremely fustrating.
- 18.31 What announcement? Only one, about half an hour ago; nothing since..
- 18.32 You should change the status to ‘Major’.
- 18.41 Good news everyone, you speed up after Bayswater. Bad news, you are already screwed.
- 19.34 Once again the "connecting" Alamein leaves Camberwell empty 1 min before the passengers arrive on its "connecting" train from the city. Glad your punctuality targets are happy, because your customers aren't!
17.29 Frankston line: Minor delays (an equipment fault near Caulfield).
17.56 Pakenham line: Minor delays (vandalism near Berwick).
17.59 A freaking useless Metro; we are stuck on a bus because of a crossing signal fault in Caulfield for 30 minutes now.
New boom barriers being installed at Murrumbeena in 1979. Almost 40 years later, these will be gone for ever.
Are trees also past their used by date? Is that why you removed them for good?
Where are all the tree huggers that appear where I live? Were these trees European or native? People are so political; it's not about trees, it's about the government which they support.
Japan treats their trees with reverence. Elevated was definitely not being built around trees like some great Japanese designs. Greens offered no help, and Labor was hell bent on destroying everything in its way. Most trees were
native, plus some exotics. Very few remain. Wildlife greatly disupted.
This State Government doesn’t care what they spend, so why not save the trees?
Our state government wants to destroy everything historic & Australian. They're drunk on "progress". No care for the future. No respect for the past.
A lot of the once upon a time tree huggers(ie greens) are now hugging Labor instead.
100-200 yr native trees, namely river red gums, wattle species important to our history & animal habitats, no reverence shown by our premier & his puppets for these precious trees. We expected Greens to make a stand, but they didn’t, so now we have lost them forever, never to be seen again.
There is no outrage when Labor is in power. However, how can their supporters (union, media or public) not want to save our old trees? I don’t understand.
I don't think that Nick cares about anything other than getting a spot on 3AW.
Since Tuesday, we've removed the overhead wires and tracks through the old Carnegie station.
Melbourne Express: Thursday, May 31, 2018.
Hope you all have as smooth a commute home.
Level Crossing Removal Authority is giving away free coffee until 9 at Altona. Come and chat about the upcoming disruptions to the Werribee line as we remove Kororoit Creek Rd level crossing.
<www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/melbourne-express-thursday-may-31-2018-20180531-p4zij9.html>
Three 20-plus storey towers to sit around new Waterloo metro station. 31 May 2018. 36 comments.
Affordable housing.
Seven hundred apartments will be built on a large block around a new rail station in inner-Sydney Waterloo, government documents show.
The Waterloo “Metro Quarter” proposal by the government’s UrbanGrowth Development Corporation and Sydney Metro, made available on Wednesday, includes four residential towers of 29, 25, 23 and 14 storeys.
Much of the development would occur at the same time as construction of the train station, which will form part of a new metro line connecting a new route under the central business district with the existing Bankstown Line.
The site of the Sydney Metro Waterloo Station under construction on Botany Rd. and Raglan Street corners. Photo: Dean Sewell
The chief executive officer at UrbanGrowth, Barry Mann, said the three taller towers needed to be seen in the context of the area: there would be a rail station directly underground, Redfern Station a short walk away, while the block
would be divided with roads and pathways.
“The scale of it is not overly dense I don’t think,” said Mr Mann.
“It’s a logical place to put more housing for the people of Sydney, and more social housing.”
Construction of the rail station and some of the buildings, including commercial and community buildings, would start in 2021, with some opening a year later. The rail line is to open in 2024. The government intends for the residential development to be finished by about 2025.
The possibility of developing apartments, along with redeveloping the social housing properties in the area, was the reason the then Baird government chose to build a new metro station at Waterloo rather than a stop at Sydney
University.
But replacing the existing social housing buildings will take longer than the development being co-ordinated by UrbanGrowth at and adjacent to the metro station. Land and Housing Corporation, which is co-ordinating the redevelopment of the social housing estate at Waterloo, has said that would be a 15-20 year project.
Of the 700 apartments to be built around the new metro station, Mr Mann said it was expected that around 10 per cent would be government-owned social housing dwellings.
These could cater for tenants in the existing social housing blocks to move into when those buildings are torn down and replaced.
The new Sydney Metro Waterloo Station. Photo: NSW government
Up to another 70 apartments would be let as “affordable housing”, available to low-middle income earners. The proposed "Metro Quarter" sits on 1.9ha of government-owned land.
The City of Sydney mayor, Clover Moore, has previously reacted with alarm to broad proposals for the redevelopment of Waterloo. Since then, the Planning Minister, Anthony Roberts, invited Cr Moore and council staff to discuss the
scheme.
A City of Sydney spokesman said the council welcomed the government's commitment to a metro station at Waterloo.
"The metro station precinct has the potential to provide a greater focus on public transport including rail, buses and cycling, footpath upgrades, street trees, local shopping, and space for support services to be enjoyed by Waterloo
residents and workers now and in the future," the spokesman said.
The new Sydney Metro Waterloo Station. Photo: NSW government
"The project needs to be executed in a sustainable way and at a scale appropriate to the area."
The proposal includes a shared pathway along Cope Street, possibility for a supermarket and other shops, and preserves the Waterloo Congregational Church.
The Matavai and Turanga towers. Photo: Cole Bennetts
UrbanGrowth’s Mr Mann said the size of the proposed towers did not represent a large change to the current environment. At 29 storeys, the tallest new tower would be slightly shorter than the 32-storey Matavai and Turanga social housing towers nearby.
These towers are proposed to be demolished. The government has said that it will retain 2000 social housing dwellings in Waterloo, but also build thousands of private dwellings in the area.
<www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/three-20-plus-storey-towers-to-sit-around-new-waterloo-metro-station-20180531-p4zimi.html>
* Yuck. More overdevelopment with ugly new-age brutalist architecture. Thanks Gladys!
* Don't worry there won't be any ghetto. With only 10% for public housing (if that happens) the other 600 or so dog house size apartments will sell for millions to yuppies, downsizes and international students on the pretext of being
trendy. In the meantime the real people of Waterloo etc will get shafted to regional NSW, caravan parks or onto the streets.
* Wonderful. Just as the local school and public transport network gets extra capacity to cover the last 30 years of neglect, the 700 apartments will have them full again and we are right back to square 1 with the same old problem to
solve.
* You can't stop the future, and the future is a ghetto. You and I will both be dead but the ghetto will develop.
* Zetland , Waterloo and Rosberry triangle is the most over developed and infrastructure undersupplied area of the city. The place is already turning into ghetto with existing high rise building each over populated with 6-8 students and immigrant workers living in 2 bed units.
It takes 30 minutes off peak to get pass Moore park due to traffic , and councils idiotic policy of encouraging developers to build less car spaces , is not persuading people not to buy cars, instead if you visit the area at any time
you will see cars double parked or circling arround for hours looking to park.
So yeah, let's throw another few dozen towers and make problems even worse.
* What's the car parking ratio?
* So the new train line will be overcrowded even before it starts operating? Great for Sydney, you fools.
Continue on, listening to the developer lobby so they can get rich. Big Australia is really good for them. Not for anyone else though.
Keep your hands off OUR city.
* how come it's so close to redfern & green square stations ? I thought it might be in the middle between south dowling & botany road . botany road at a standstill already . I don't think any of these people ever drive anywhere .
* The new station serves almost the same area as Redfern Station. Very long tunnels are needed to serve just one station. What are they thinking? Waterloo station should be on the east/west Olympic Park Metro and one kilometre from
Redfern Station. Other nearby stations on this line are Leichhardt, Camperdown. Sydney University, Zetland and University of NSW. All stations about one kilometre apart and all on a straight line.
* Given that the Labor party has said that it will not build the metro line to Sydenham and then wreck the existing Bankstown line by converting it to a metro, where does this leave the plans of the government's developers friends
following an inevitable change of government next March?
This latest ill-conceived development in an already overcrowded suburb is a further example of the endless failures of a government bereft of planning skills yet ready to subsidize developers with the construction of a metro line that duplicates the existing nearby airport line.
The massive over-development currently occurring in Epping, similarly located on a new metro line, shows just how the Waterloo scheme will look. Everyone aside from the property developers loses as traffic jams clog streets and existing residents discover that their formerly amenable suburb has been turned into an overcrowded ghetto.
* Publicly funded rail infrastructure provides huge boost to property developer's coffers. Neo-cons rule!
* This is great. A much needed new station!
* And here I was thinking maybe we'd get some more social infrastructure instead. Who needs urban green spaces anyway? The buildings look nearly as attractive as the developments in Zetland or the wonderful new ghetto in Green Square. How embarrassing for the NSW government to have this as their legacy.
* No new infrastructure... it’s above a brand new train line people!
* I thought the artist perception of the blocks look like rolls of dunny paper and boxes of tissues. Kind of original I guess.
But anything this LNP disaster does is original. They haven't learned anything from previous mistakes.
* Another example of well thought out policies -- that need no input or consultation with the Electorate by the LNP & the Reserve bank Of Immigration - you could say Reserve Bank of Shoe-Box Apartments wqith thier Big Australia and near zero interest rates.
Pretty soon Sydney will look like little Hong Kong and Melbourne like Tokyo..
The concept of high density slums is not in the vocabulary of both.
* Does anyone seriously believe that Sydney can continue as a city with everyone wanting to live ona quarter acre block in a stand alone house, 15 minutes from the city centre?
Obviously, the city is very CBD focused - OK, stick a compass in, draw a circle 5km from there & remove height limits within the area. Charge developers massive infrastructure fees & use the money to fund 21st century public transport for those areas AND those areas that are now over an hour away but need to be 30 minutes (Campbelltown, Liverpool, Kellyville, etc).
This will give Sydneysiders CHOICE - live in the high density city with all of its benefits, or live 30 minutes travel away in a low density suburb with all of its benefits.
The problem right now is that too many people want the best of both worlds & it comes at the expense of those less well off!
* We're a very cautious people who don't like change. Downtown Sydney could be like downtown Hong Kong for all I care. Build it and I'll decide if I want to live there or not.
* "Obviously, the city is very CBD focused - OK, stick a compass in, draw a circle 5km from there & remove height limits within the area"
Can we just exclude a few places in that circle that are a little too expensive to build on e.g. Woolhara, Vaucluse, Neutral Bay, Mosman, Lavender Bay, Double Bay, Balmain, Wollestoncraft, Glebe, Rose Bay, Paddington, Centennial Park, Bellevue Hill, Point Piper...
So what have we got left? Surprise, surprise...only Redfern/Waterloo.
* It's great to see more housing opportunities and accommodating social housing too..! it makes these popular locations (moments from city) open to more families... There should be more opportunities like these along the Sydenham-
Bankstown corridor too...
* A slum waiting to happen...,. Sydney Planning is the ultimate oxymoron.
* this of course means forcibly relocating a lot of "undesirable" current residents.
* This Govt has ruined Sydney & made future ghettos in these high rise towers ALL OVER the metropolitan area. Dreadful quality builds and ugly designs causing wind tunnels and overshadowing once sunny streets.
A concrete jungle.
* Love the comments section, such great ideas. We all want more affordable housing, more social housing and also more trees and more parks, but not 'those' trees and parks, 'these' trees and parks. But not 'that' kind of affordable
housing and not social housing 'there', and if you could build it not with my tax dollars. And build it near lots of transport options, but not 'those' transport options, 'these' transport options, and close to the city, but not too
close to the city... Everyone is an expert! Don't we all love a whinge. Keyboard warrior NIMBY's especially.
* meanwhile Im 20 minutes drive from cbd of adelaide 600m above sea level sitting on an acre of old growth deciduous forest spending several weeks a year on the north shores of port stephens on acre lots 400m away and 20m above the sea surrounded by thick forest. traffic lights? pollution? crime? I know not of what you talk.
suck it up sydney. a teeny dog kennel that has every door and window barred all for only 2 generations of bank debt and working an 80 hour week and how much a week in tolls?
* For those who don’t know this area behind Botany road, and that is almost every Sydneysider, there is many of the old fig trees, parkland and huge nesting and living habitat for native birds, cockatoos, lorikeets etc. there is even
some of the original sandstone from before Europen settlemet. And a huge human community. Check the plans for how much of that will survive. More destruction of Sydney heritage and environment for developers and wringing out every last drop of profit.
* If we stopped importing people, the solution would take care of itself.
* A week or two of population growth covered there.
* Another 'high rise' disaster without proper infrastructure. What was that definition of insanity...doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Absolute madness!!!
* "...without proper infrastructure" - did you read the article? Its build right over a new train station.....better off building high rise here than at other locations where no trains exist (or building airports without train
infrastructure like Badgerys Creek - don't get me started on that one, but thats a disaster in the making). With 2 million people arriving over the next 30 years, we gotta house'm somewhere - this is not a bad start IMO
* Without proper infrastructure? It's on top of a metro station.
* I love the way they come up with these names. Doesn't the Metro Quarter sound cool. Like the French Quarter in New Orleans. Wow!
Why not call it the Over Crowded Quarter or the Future Slum Quarter? Yeah, not the right spin. My bad.
Well, we all want a to be in a Global City. Wow, that sounds cool.
* thats what the french quarter in new orleans is. but you have to add massive violent crime and constant flooding too.
* How about Slum Quarter?
* The ghost of Mike Baird still haunts Sydney. These look absolutely ghastly. Well done NSW Gov!
* You can tell from that tiny diagram what they will look like? Take a look at what they're replacing if you want to see absolutely ghastly.
Sydney train services heavily delayed after signal failure at Central, 31 May 2018 — 17.14.
Commuters heading home from Sydney CBD faced a slow and crowded journey home on Thursday after a signal failure temporarily halted trains in and out of the city circle.
Commuters beginning to crowd a Central Station platform shortly after 4pm. Photo: Sahar Alouie.
Passengers using the T1, T2, T3 and T8 lines suffered major delays and timetable confusion for at least two hours.
Frustrated commuters initially reported no trains were moving around the city circle around 4pm.
Some services were cancelled, others were running up to 30 minutes late.
Data editor Shane Miles got on a train heading to Blacktown from Town Hall around 4pm. "It ended up sitting there with the doors open for 20 minutes because nothing was moving," he said.
When his train finally started moving, it wasn't the end of his commuting woes.
"The train to Blacktown I was on was cancelled once we got to Strathfield where we slowly got out onto an already crowded platform," Mr Miles said.
"Got back on a train eventually with a lot of other uncomfortable people."
A spokesman for Sydney Trains said the signalling issue was "found pretty quickly and fixed" and that the train lines affected are running "a regular service".
But at 5.30pm trains were still running well behind schedule, with reports of ongoing cancellations and timetable chaos.
<www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/sydney-train-services-heavily-delayed-after-signal-failure-at-central-20180531-p4ziqk.html>