Hi Mal,
This one tended to balance things a bit compared with Bourke St.
1. Regarding that ban, just before the tram stops there is a sign saying that right and left turns are banned. See first image below from the video. File info states that the video started at St Kilda Junction at 9:20am so this turn is illegal.
The second image from Apple Maps is clear enough to read the conditions. Unless I have missed something, by this it is OK to do the turns in the middle of the peak hour which seems rather odd.
The last image indicates that authorised vehicle can enter at any time.
Anyway this illegal turn delayed the tram. A hook turn here would solve the problem if anyone wanted to pay for it to be put up.
2. I don’t know what rules apply today, but in the past the 3rd tram had to stop again before entering the intersection. It could then continue if lights were still green.
I have no doubt that buses are even more at the mercy of traffic lights. In my opinion, the traffic light programmers have spent the last 80+ years perfecting the art of delaying trams as much as possible, and are not going to give up the expertise without a massive fight. On visits I sometimes ride lines which I once drove, and apart from a few odd places where a 7 second T light has been installed, little has changed except more and more lights, especially instead of roundabouts, with consequent lengthy delays.
One of the biggest hindrances to efficient tram movements is the bureaucrats who set speed limits. When I drove, there were almost no speed limits. Tram drivers were trusted to work out what was safe and what was not. Nowadays drivers, no less competent than in the past, are not trusted to do anything for themselves.
Bourke St Mall now 10 km/h. We had no limit, and went faster when nobody was likely to get in the way, and somewhat slower when lunchtime buskers often had spectators on the tracks. Nobody got run over that I ever heard of.
The same applies to George St’s 20 km/h where much faster would be perfectly safe in some areas, but too fast in others.
On another matter, before simply blaming the less than ideal ‘2 rooms and a bath’ design, I would take a close look at the flange shapes. I routinely walk across the sharpest curve on the Good Coast line, just by the Southport tram stop. Despite over 10 years of running (with testing) there is no visible curve wear. Similarly when I last looked the curve out of the colonnade of the L1 at Central showed no wear, so if suddenly rails are being chewed out there (I did not look a few weeks ago) it’s very likely that flanges are chewing away the rail. Certainly an unwise wheel grinder procedure in Melbourne chewed the life out of curves very quickly. That seems to have been fixed with use of wheel lathes. Certainly nowadays very few curves feel chewed when riding, a vast improvement from 10+ years ago.
Richard
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> On 19 Mar 2024, at 4:43 pm, Mal Rowe mal.rowe@...> wrote:
>
> Thanks Richard,
>
> A couple of observations:
>
> 1. The van doing aright turn at the 7 minute mark was breaking the law. No motor vehicles are allowed into that intersection (police an ambulance excepted of course).
>
> 2. The number of services in Swanston St means that the third tram in a block often misses the lights because of bunching. Moving at least one of the services into William St should help that.
>
> I had occasion to ride a bus into the city via Lygon St and Lonsdale St recently - if you think tram priority is poor then you would despair over the buses!
>
> Mal Rowe - patient passenger
>
>
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