-----Original Message-----
From: Roderick Smith [mailto:rodsmith@werple.net.au]
Sent: Sunday, 13 May 2018 6:15 PM
To: 'transportdownunder@yahoogroups.com'
Subject: Mon.30.4.18 daily digest.

Ringwood would be enhanced by running the weekend timetable midweek: more
service from fewer resources, with 10 min headways to Ringwood and 20 on
each route beyond.
During peaks, services could be enhanced by running combined Blackburn &
Alamein trains very 10 min, splitting/combining at Camberwell. That is
beyond PTV/TfV/Metro ability, although common in Japan, Netherlands, Belgium
and even UK.
During late night, the current 20 min service should replace 30 min, with
Alamein connecting and the other two splitting/combining at Ringwood. Of
course, the standard management bleat: 'we can't cope, we don't try, and we
don't care'.

Attached:

180430M Melbourne 'Herald Sun':
- state budget.
- letters (rail & road).

180430M Metro Twitter - Albert Park.

Roderick

Mon.30.4.18 Metro Twitter.
8.46 Craigieburn/Sunbury/Upfield lines: Minor delays (ill passengers at
North Melbourne).
9.03 Cranbourne/Pakenham lines: Major delays due (an alarm activation near
Dandenong). [what sort of alarm?].
- 9.09, now minor and clearing.
Albert Park photos within our Public Transport Photographic Collection:
https://prov.vic.gov.au/explore-collection/explore-topic/photographs-and-fil
m/public-transport-photo-collection.
Grandstanding at the new Platform 10 entrance at Flinders St Station with
Mick. The new entrance has been getting great feedback from passengers.
13.35 Minor delays Footscray - Werribee (an equipment fault near Newport).
13.39 Sunbury line: Minor delays Sunshine - Footscray (police).
18.31 Minor delays and clearing to services through Southern Cross (police)..

Melbourne Express, Monday, April 30, 2018
9.11 Major delays on the Cranbourne line because of an alarm activation at
Dandenong. Minor delays on Craigieburn, Frankston, Pakenham, Sunbury and
Upfield lines.
8.28 Travel alerts on the Craigieburn and Frankston lines. Hurstbridge
commuters are on buses for another week.
7.28 At Ivanhoe, not only have train works been extended another week
(they're still out between Clifton Hill and Macleod), now they're
resurfacing the road at the intersection of Lower and Upper Heidelberg
roads.
There were already delays at 5am when Express attempted to pass. Workers ran
overtime. They're packing up now.
The state government has announced a record $13.7 billion spend on roads,
railways and other infrastructure ahead of tomorrow's budget.
Major delays already on the Pakenham and Upfield lines, thanks to a faulty
train. Hurstbridge commuters are starting an extra week of works after more
than a month of delays.
<www.theage.com.au/melbourne-news/melbourne-express-monday-april-30-2018-201
80430-p4zccu.html>

The Sydney railway stations trains skip more than others 30 April 2018.
Trains missing scheduled stops on Sydney's rail network have long been a
frustration of passengers left standing on platforms or forced to disembark
further down the track.
Now new figures released under freedom of information laws show the Airport
line is the worst for stations skipped, at stops such as Wolli Creek and
Sydney Airport's international and domestic terminals, followed by the North
Shore line.
The Airport line was the worst for skipped stations on Sydney's rail
network. Photo: Dean Sewell Wolli Creek near Sydney Airport had 23 trains
skip it between November and early February, while the domestic and
international terminals, Mascot and Green Square each had 12 services miss
them.
The North Shore line was the second worst for stations skipped. Artarmon was
skipped on 11 occasions during the period and Waitara, Waverton and
Wollstonecraft stations 10 times each.
And the data shows a surge in stations skipped after changes to Sydney's
rail timetable late last year.
Trains missed scheduled stops at almost six stations a day during the peak
in the 10 weeks after the new timetable was introduced on November 26,
compared with about two a day in the weeks leading up to the changes.
The figures after the roll out of the timetable include the meltdown of the
rail network on December 11 – when 42 stations were skipped – and January 9
(26). The data released does not include the first day of the meltdown in
January, however.
video: Train delays 'irrecoverable' under new timetable An internal document
reveals that delays to Sydney's trains are likely to be "cumulative and
irrecoverable" during peak hours following incidents.
Labor transport spokeswoman Jodi McKay said the data would have shown Sydney
Trains early on that there was a problem with the new timetable following
its introduction.
“If the reports weren't enough to convince them there was a problem, looking
at the data on the number of skipped stops should have been,” she said.
Related Article: Secret report warned top bureaucrats to delay new rail
timetable A confidential report by British experts in March 2017 warned
transport officials to delay the timetable changes until early this year.
But Sydney Trains said in a statement that skipped stations represented
fewer than 0.1 per cent of the hundreds of thousands of scheduled stops made
each month.
“We recognise it can be frustrating for customers when their station is
skipped, but we only skip stops as a last resort during incidents on our
network,” it said.
“When this occurs, we make sure there is another service arriving soon for
these customers to board.”
Sydney Trains' key indicator of success is the percentage of trains arriving
within five minutes of scheduled times. That emphasis on punctuality, the
British experts said in their “sensitive” report last year, could lead to
“services being planned and operated without due consideration of a rail
service which passengers are known to find important” such as journey times.
They recommended senior managers improve the “KPI system so that railway
management address a wider range of outcomes rather than just ‘% on time’”.
56 comments.
* no problems, last time they couldn't make trains run to the timetable,
they just changed the definition of late to 15 m...
& This Coalition government can't organise a chook raffle in a pub; or if
they do, they will fudge the numbers.
<www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/the-sydney-railway-stations-trains-skip-more-th
an-others-20180420-p4zasy.html>

AEMC says grid operating to standards, prompts call for new standards 30
April 2018.
<www.brisbanetimes.com.au/business/the-economy/aemc-says-grid-operating-to-s
tandards-prompts-call-for-new-standards-20180430-p4zcff.html>

Key reason people are fleeing Sydney for Melbourne news.com.au April 30,
2018.
What does a million dollars buy in Aussie capital cities?
THERE’S no doubt that Sydneysiders are fleeing the harbour city for
Melbourne, and an obvious reason for that is stratospheric house prices.
But Sydney’s geography is also to blame, creating a double whammy of pain
for residents.
Australian Bureau of Statistics data released on Tuesday showed Sydney’s
population rose 2 per cent in 2016-17 to 5.1 million, an increase of 101,600
people. That was fuelled by 85,000 overseas migrants.
But more than 18,000 people abandoned Sydney last year.
In contrast, Melbourne welcomed 9000 newcomers from other states and
territories.
One of the key reasons is Sydney has become Australia’s “lopsided city”.
Unlike every other capital, whose CBDs are roughly in the centre of the
metropolitan area, central Sydney is located at the far eastern end.
The western extreme of the city, Penrith, is about 55km away. Head east and
you’ll fall into the sea at Bondi Beach, just 9km from the steps of the
Opera House.
MELBOURNE V SYDNEY FOODIES:WHAT WE EAT, WHEN, WHERE MELB AND SYDNEY AMONG
MOST EXPENSIVE CITIES The moody skyline of Melbourne from Altona, about half
an hour from the CBD. Picture: Jay Town The skyline of Parramatta (front) is
the geographical heart of Greater Sydney, with Sydney’s CBD about 25km east.
TYRANNY OF DISTANCE
Compounding the tyranny of distance, data obtained by News has found
Sydneysiders looking to buy a home in the city’s median house price range
have to search further from the CBD than Melburnians, only adding to the
commuter misery for those working in the city centre.
Western Sydney University chair of architecture Chris Knapp said the city’s
CBD was one of the most beautiful in the world, but it made Greater Sydney
lopsided.
“If you were going to build a city from scratch for eight million people,
you wouldn’t build Sydney the way it is,” Professor Knapp said.
“It has lots of people commuting a very long distance to the business
centre.
“The Sydney CBD’s exquisite geographic placement on the harbour is wonderful
— once you get there. Many people also have to reach the CBD by only the
Harbour Bridge and tunnel, which is logistically a nightmare and there’s
huge pressure on that kind of density.”
Melbourne welcomed 9000 newcomers from other states and territories.
Picture: Supplied Sydney’s CBD is on one edge of the city’s urban area.
Picture: Greater Sydney Commission He compared Sydney to the challenges that
plague San Francisco and New York, two cities whose centres are concentrated
at one end of the urban area with limited access to the CBD.
According to property data and analytics firm, CoreLogic, the median house
price in Melbourne is $828,720; in Sydney it’s a whopping $1,033,892.
Research from comparison website finder.com.au shows that in Melbourne a
trip of about 25km is needed to find houses for sale around $800,000. That’s
about the distance from Federation Square in the city centre to Altona,
which takes half an hour by train.
Yet, aside from a few scattered suburbs, to get to the median house price in
Sydney generally means heading 35km from the CBD.
Comparison of average house prices in Sydney and Melbourne, the further you
get from their respective CBDs. Picture: finder.com.au That means buying a
home somewhere like Glenwood, close to Blacktown in the city’s west, or
Loftus in the south, at least a 50-minute slog from a CBD job.
Meanwhile, properties within 15-20km of the CBD can be about 40 per cent
cheaper in Melbourne than in Sydney.
“It’s clear that buyers in Melbourne are getting a much better deal than
those in Sydney, especially for areas close to the hustle and bustle of the
central business district,” finder.com.au insights manager Graham Cooke
said.
Blacktown, in Sydney’s west, has prices close to the city’s median. Picture:
AAP Image/David Swift ‘HARD TO ARGUE WITH THE MATHS’
Prof Knapp said this financial reality was pushing people out of Sydney.
“It’s hard to argue with the maths. If people are faced with making a real
choice they’ll follow the path of least resistance (and move),” he said.
“But another factor will be what they are giving up, given that Sydney is
the only Australian city with a global footprint and global connectedness.”
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has championed the notion of the “30-minute
city”, where a journey from front door to office door can be completed in
half an hour.
Again, Sydneysiders pay vastly more for this privilege.
Lidcombe, on the cusp of western Sydney, is about 30 minutes by train from
the CBD station of Wynyard. Average house prices in Lidcombe are about
$1.2m.
In Sunshine, in Melbourne’s west and a similar journey time from Flinders
St, a house will set you back less than $800,000.
To get a house for that price in Sydney would mean heading out as far as
Yennora, at least 45-minutes distance from platform to platform, let alone
door-to-door.
Mapping by data firm CoreLogic shows house prices in Melbourne’s suburbs.
More affordable housing, particularly in the city’s west and north, is
relatively close to the CBD. Picture: CoreLogic.
In Sydney, the CBD is further from suburbs with houses in the median house
price range. Picture: CoreLogic SYDNEY CHALLENGED Unit prices are,
naturally, cheaper across the board. But, again, Melbourne beats Sydney.
About 30km from the CBD, flats in Melbourne are 30 per cent cheaper than in
the NSW city.
“The challenge with Sydney is that you don’t really get affordable housing
unless you go to new housing estates — like Camden, Oran Park and near
Richmond — and they are a long way from the centre and there is not a lot of
infrastructure,” CoreLogic head of research Cameron Kushner said.
“The other big difference is Sydney is surrounded by water and national
parks. So while Sydney is running out of developable land and having to
build a lot more medium and higher density, in Melbourne there’s more
potential for urban sprawl as the supply isn’t as constrained.”
There are grand plans to recast Greater Sydney as three interconnected
cities. Picture: Greater Sydney Commission SYDNEY NEEDS TWO NEW CITIES But
there is a grand plan to try to address Sydney’s awkward geography and the
remoteness of its CBD from vast swathes of the population.
The Greater Sydney Commission, a NSW Government body, has proposed a “three
city metropolis”. Sydney’s existing CBD becomes the “Harbour City”, a
central “River City” centred on Parramatta and a “western “Parklands City”
encompassing Penrith and the new airport under construction at Badgerys
Creek.
Parramatta — already a forest of skyscrapers — houses one of Australia’s
largest hospitals, is one of Sydney’s major shopping areas, has the sixth
busiest station in the city’s rail network and is in the process of nabbing
some of the CBD’s crown jewels with the Powerhouse design and technology
museum to be controversially moved west.
A $2.7 billion recast of the previously shabby city centre is under way with
open spaces, eateries and civic buildings.
Flinders Street Station lies in the heart of mono-centric Melbourne Picture:
istock Ambitious plans aim to make Parramatta Sydney’s “Central River City”.
Prof Knapp said a lot of Sydneysiders with an outdated aversion to heading
west were just going to have to get over it if they wanted to be able to
live within a reasonable distance of work.
“With a lot of people, there’s still this clichéd understanding of what
western Sydney is, but that will change. You won’t recognise Parramatta a
couple of decades from now,” he said.
Indeed, Yennora, with its sub $800,000 homes, is an easy 20 minutes from
Parramatta.
Prof Knapp said Sydney was similar to Los Angeles, bar the latter’s lack of
public transport, with both cities made up of scattered neighbourhoods.
LA is already a “polycentric” city with major hubs like Downtown, Pasadena
and Long Beach, while Sydney’s plans could see it become Australia’s first
multi-modal metropolis.
But will people still prefer mono-centric Melbourne, reliant on its single,
established CBD?
Comments 13
<www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/key-reason-people-are-fleeing-sydney-for
-melbourne/news-story/614e1a7c04e514d5b5291b11caf711ad>

Eastern Transport Coalition calls for improvements on Belgrave and Lilydale
lines.
Maroondah Leader April 30, 2018.
Eastern Transport Coalition chair Stuart James and deputy chair Michael
Macdonald are calling for an upgraded Croydon railway station and more
services on the Belgrave and Lilydale lines. Photo: Daniel Pockett.
A PUBLIC transport action group is calling for a revamped Croydon railway
station and more services on the Belgrave and Lilydale train lines.
The Eastern Transport Coalition will launch its Fix The Belgrave and
Lilydale lines campaign tomorrow handing out flyers backing their calls at
stations until November’s state election.
The group consists of representatives from seven councils in Melbourne’s
east including Maroondah, Yarra Ranges, Knox, Whitehorse and Monash.
They are calling for at least four services an hour in each direction on
both lines beyond Ringwood railway station during the morning and evening
peak.
The group also wants upgrades to Croydon railway station and the removal of
its level crossing, as well as the duplication of the Lilydale line from
Mooroolbark.
Coalition chairman Stuart James said the amount of people using the Belgrave
and Lilydale lines was among the fastest growing in Melbourne but had
received “little to no investment”.
The group claims both lines were the equal-worst for overcrowding in
Melbourne last year, while the Belgrave line was the second-worst for
punctuality during peak periods.
ETC deputy chairman and Maroondah councillor Michael Macdonald said Croydon
railway station and others on the Lilydale line were in desperate need of
attention.
“It (Croydon station) was built in 1970s, it’s dilapidated and it brings
down the amenity of the local area,” he said.
“People I’ve spoken to feel unsafe and they don’t feel its accessible.
“The whole line needs to be modernised and refurbished, and if you look at
all the stations, apart from Ringwood, all of them haven’t really been
touched,” he said.
Public Transport Users Association president Tony Motton said he supported
ETC’s initiatives.
He also called for more services during the off-peak on both lines, which he
said could be done with existing infrastructure.
“There’s clearly the capacity to run services more than every half-hour,
that’s all you get on a daytime service these days, and its increasingly
inadequate for community needs,” Mr Motton said.
Public Transport minister Jacinta Allan did not respond to questions about
potential investments on both lines.
Commuters can sign up to ETC’s campaign by visiting www.etc.org.au/trains
<www.heraldsun.com.au/leader/news/eastern-transport-coallition-calls-for-imp
rovements-on-belgrave-and-lilydale-train-lines/news-story/dcb3276589ab63d12f
dc993d0c4d19cd>

Privatisations, population and property. Where Victoria's billions are
coming from. 30 April 2018.
Where are the billions coming from? In part, from property. This financial
year Treasurer Tim Pallas will get $6.6 billion from property stamp duty, up
from $5.4 billion in 2015-16. He will get $2.4 billion from land tax, up
from $1.7 billion in 2015.
The good news is that Victorian property values are staying high. Sydney
prices slid 1.7 per cent in the three months to March whereas Melbourne
prices slipped just 0.5 per cent.
Going forward, Tuesday’s budget will forecast still high but lower income
from stamp duty, a judgment that looks about right. Melbourne’s population
growth is the strongest in Australia, which means Melbourne property prices
are more likely than most to stay high.
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews with Treasurer Tim Pallas. Photo: Josh
Robenstone Many more of the billions will come from asset sales. The
Turnbull government will pay the Andrews government a touch over $2 billion
for Victoria’s share of Snowy Hydro, and a private buyer will pay it an
estimated $2 billion for the right to run the land titles registry.
Victoria will get $16.8 billion from the Commonwealth Grants Commission in
goods and services tax collections, that’s about $900 million more than it
expected. It’ll reflect both Victoria’s bigger than expected population, and
its lower than expected share of Commonwealth infrastructure grants. The
Grants Commission’s formula requires it to compensate for Commonwealth
stinginess after enough years have passed, and the Abbott and Turnbull
governments have been stingy long enough for the compensation to kick in.
Video Victorian treasurer delivers budget address
68 comments.
* The problem with the sale of the Titles Office is that there is no
protection for public land. If Crown land gets con...
* One of the fastest growing country areas is around Warragul and Drouin.
Promises of funding for a new regional hospital...
<www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/where-the-state-budget-s-cash-is-coming
-from-20180430-p4zcgx.html>