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To: Tdu Transportdownunder transportdownunder@...>
Sent: Monday, 15 April 2019, 9:44
Subject: Sun.24.3.19 daily digest

Roderick.
Sun.24.3.19 Metro Twitter
Mernda line: Buses replace trains Thornbury - Epping until the last train (level-crossing works).  Train will operate Flinders St - Bell and Epping - Mernda.
Buses replace trains Burnley - Glen Waverley until last train (maintenance works).
Pakenham/Cranbourne/Frankston lines: Buses replace trains Flinders St - Caulfield until the last train.  Express buses depart from Arts Centre.  All-stations buses depart from Parliament from 7.00 until 22.00 [then Flinders St until the last train?].
- I suggest that everyone allows at least 3 hours for additional travel time; leaving MCG at 19.27 Sat. was embarrassing.
- 18.45  It's a joke.  I have been waiting for at least 20 min, and no sign of a Cranbourne express bus.
- Works associated with the South Yarra entrance to the tunnel.
- You just keep impeding My Families transport. Cost Metro. Work. Money.
Buses replace trains Parliament - Sandringham until the last train (project works).  After 22.00, buses will operate to/from Flinders St.
6.14 Upfield line: Minor delays (police attending to a trespasser near Anstey).  Trains will be held.
- 6.36 now major.
- 6.43 clearing.
14.33 Pakenham line: Minor delays (an ill passenger requiring medical assistance at Berwick).
- 14.46 clearing.
17.02 Hurstbridge line: Minor delays (debris on tracks near Eltham).
- 17.33 Utterly rubbish service.
- 17.55 clearing.
- 19.24 Minor delays (equipment faults between Watsonia and Macleod).
- 21.19 clearing.
- Oh Dear. Over how many years?
- This was an earlier fault and we now have a good service [if those headways on the line can be called 'good'].
- I am convinced that Hurstbridge will go down in sympathy with Mernda over the next WEEKS.
22.51 Pakenham line: Minor delays (a car blocking tracks between Cardinia Road and Pakenham).  Trains may [ie] be held.
- 22.58 clearing
- Good work by those involved to remove the offending car before delays escalated to major.

Mobile myki system switched on from next week for some users
Herald Sun March 24, 2019
Physical myki cards could be a thing of the past for many users. Picture: Mark Dadswell.
Commuters will be able to throw out their myki cards and pay for public transport trips using their smartphones from Thursday.
The Sunday Herald Sun can reveal commuters with Google-powered Android phones will be able to touch on and touch off using the new “mobile myki” system after a successful trial.
The government is also continuing to negotiate with Apple and hopes to strike a deal soon that will allow iPhone users to ditch their physical myki cards as well.
To make the switch from 7am on Thursday, commuters will need to pay $10 to register a mobile myki on Google Pay.
The $10 will be turned into credit to cover the cost of train, tram and bus trips, with mobile myki allowing passengers to select from full price, concession, child or senior myki fares.
The app will also display recent travel history and enable commuters to top up their myki on the go within seconds.
“Mobile myki will make topping up and touching on quicker and travelling easier,” Public Transport Minister Melissa Horne said.
Android users will be able to top up their mobile myki on their smartphone instead of using machines at stations. Picture: Mark Dadswell
“It’s the next step in building a smarter, more reliable public transport network and is on top of our record investment in major transport projects — to deliver more services, more often, right across the state.”
The Sunday Herald Sun revealed earlier this year that 4000 Android users would be given the chance to trial the technology after extensive testing since July last year.
The trial found most commuters would be “highly likely” to recommend mobile myki to others. Participants delivered an 80 out of 100 verdict for their overall satisfaction.
In 2016, ticketing provider NTT Data struck a new $700 million, seven-year deal with the Andrews Government to continue running the problem-plagued myki system.
The deal included a requirement to implement new technology to give commuters an alternative to physical myki cards — although they will remain in use.
The government did not need to upgrade myki gates and readers at railway stations and on trams and buses to switch on the new mobile myki system.
It is understood authorities are also open to seeing if the myki system can be overhauled to allow commuters to touch on and touch off directly with their credit cards, but this is considered to be a longer-term proposition.
Ms Horne said mobile myki was part of the government’s commitment to improving the state’s public transport system and getting “Victorians home safer and sooner”.
HI-TECH TRIAL TO TRANSFORM MYKI
MYKI OPERATOR WINS NEW CONTRACT
<www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/mobile-myki-system-switched-on-from-next-week-for-some-users/news-story/8efb142c3b6b0982fd25a9c44148da19>
Letters to the editor March 24, 2019
* Travel troubles on Canberra's buses. Regarding the old 63 service, not only do I now have to to get an earlier bus to get to work, but I now have to get two buses!
A five-minute trip to Erindale now takes 13 minutes, and then I have to get another bus to Woden. On the return journey I have to get off at Erindale and wait half-an-hour for the next bus to Monash. Oh yes, I am also disabled.
Can someone please tell me how this better or even efficient?
Supposedly this is also to do with light rail link up, for which I am paying exorbitant rates and for a service I will probably not see in my lifetime..
Well done ACTION!
* Fueling debate. Jenny Goldie (Letters, March 18) is wrong. The construction of light rail in Canberra may represent "a rapid shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy" but that is all it is — a representation, not a saviour. The present-day environmental cost and amount of embodied fossil fuel energy that has gone into the construction of the light rail is astronomical. It will take more than 30 years of fewer cars on Northbourne Avenue to offset the initial fossil fuel outlay. And as cars become more environmentally friendly, including electric, that 30 years could blow out and never recoup the initial fossil fuel outlay.
Sixty thousand cubic metres of concrete had to be mined, crushed, mixed and trucked to site. Forty-eight kilometres of steel rail section had to have its iron ore mined, trucked, melted, extruded then trucked again across Australia.
Twenty-four kilometres of overhead wires and myriad steel poles to keep them aloft all had to be mined, melted, fabricated, processed, transported and erected using fossil fuels.
Then there are 14 40-tonne tram vehicles fabricated in factories in Spain and shipped to Sydney then overland to Canberra using fossil fuels all the way.
Not to mention the local fossil fuel consuming activities such as cutting down more than 500 trees on Northbourne Avenue, rerouting the gas mains, vast digging up and disposal of soil from the median strip, transport and placement of kilometres of steel safety fencing and the constant to and fro of a multitude of construction vehicles for the almost two-year construction period. Anyone who thinks the Canberra light rail is an exercise in a net saving of fossil fuels needs to think again.
<www.canberratimes.com.au/national/act/travel-troubles-on-canberra-s-buses-20190323-p516xj.html>

Battle of the bitumen: Andrews is Shorten's not-so-secret weapon March 24, 2019.
<www.theage.com.au/national/battle-of-the-bitumen-andrews-is-shorten-s-not-so-secret-weapon-20190324-p5172u.html>