Public transport in Melbourne is appalling
Or rather, as I liked to call it at the time when privatisation was so du jour, private transport for public use. Or something like that. The situation here is so appalling that I am highly tempted to say that my pathetic attempts at writing are better by comparison. Why, that’s the sort of comment one would expect from Fat Cow Poet!
My dear constantly documented ex-boyfriend is a regular user of public transport. He used it nearly everyday last year to get to art college. Towards the end of the year when stress is high and all sorts of assignments are due, there had to be one week where five out of the ten times he relied upon public transport, services were not available due to:
- late arrival at major train station (Flinders Street Station)
- service was just plain cancelled
- train declared defective at point of origin or beginning of train route
Now, the ex is not a stupid fellow. Yes, he ranted about how f-ing this and that the services were, but he also attempted to actually do something about it. He wrote a letter via e-mail to Connex, the company responsible for Melbourne’s train-reliant passengers being constantly late and disappointed. Oh, and they apparently mastermind the running of the trains too. Sadly, this complaint did little. Connex gave him a reply which regurgitated some customer charter - you know the sort. The ones big-arse companies write and never actually mean, especially when you bother to ask them about it. I used to work for a market research company that was contracted by the company Sensis and I can assure you, the charter is better used as emergency toilet paper.
12 Comments
Good grief! What a post! And all because of a car sticker, amazing.
I am very confused - I thought you lived in America, can you please do an ‘about’ page to confirm that you are a Brit living in Oz?
I was interested in your comment on my site. It was along the lines that you had never thought of blogging as a social tool, but only as a form of writing - something that comes over quite clearly from your site here. Excellent writing but quite hard to get on to! Having said that I DO like the way I get a mail when you have posted. As your posts are long and require thought I can ‘plan’ my reading of them - today’s has been over a brunch of poached eggs and tea!
Back to the social thing. I consider blogging part of my social life, sad cow that I am. I live in the country here and we’ve both found it difficult to make friends with locals so I feel quite cut off. Blogging gives me a chance to met other people, and some jolly fine ones I have met too, yourself included. Of course I enjoy writing and prancing about and playing to the gallery too!
I don’t blame you for not wanting the common wealth games. The choas of the (farcical) America’s Cup here was bad enough. No one was allowed to put their rubbish out because it made the place look ‘untidy’. Not as untidy as our maggot strewn garage by the end of it. Lovely. And fiddling about with road signs in one of my bete noirs.
And back to your original sticker: I sincerely hope that it did mean facilities for autistics were not good there…
AH! Found a bit about you, but you don’t say much!
Hi Caroline!
Yes, I have a mailing list function to which you were automatically added as you registered in order to make a comment (for which I thank thee!!!). It’s also good because as my entries tend to be a bit more essay-like, I don’t write as often as a blogger whose focus is on everyday life.
But different strokes for different folks!
There are several ‘pages’ where I generally crap on about me me me, but the most applicable would be:
The bio
It would be a great shame to discover that the facilities for autistic people are substandard, but sadly it’s also very probable. I have heard of instances where other people with various intellectual disabilities are forced into geriatric nursing homes, even if they are not elderly, purely because there just isn’t any public resources for them, and private ones are not affordable.
I should like to add that I’m not against the Commonwealth Games as such, I guess I’m just a bit surprised that a small city like Melbourne is hosting them. I can think of other cities that probably have better resources and infrastructure.
I do support the attitude of goodwill, however, and that is one thing the games should bring. I hope Melburnians remember this when driving in some of the areas affected by the Games - please be patient! The clueless driver accidentally holding you up is probably me.
Hey, Caroline - the America’s Cup is on the sea! Why would they care what the land looks like (she says facetiously). I’m very sorry to hear about the state of your garage. Maggots…shudder. Whereabouts in the countryside are you? Typical city-dweller that I am, taking it for granted that I live in a city. I guess when you mention blogging as a social thing from that perspective, it makes a bit more sense to me, dull social retard that I am, apparently even on cyberspace!
I’m on the northshore of Auckland, probably the last house that can actually put ‘Auckland’ on their address…7 acres, I dog, 4 cats, 2 pregnant cows, 9 chickens and two pigs. Oh and three kids…can’t believe I actually said I was lonely. Ha!
Ooh wow! That sounds like a very peaceful life. I think 30 years ago where I live in Melbourne (upper north) used to be farmland. In fact, when I first arrived here, we had to wait for our house to be built! From scratch!
Sounds like you’ve got a bit of a farm happening there, and I’m very envious of the number of cats you have, what heaven! Just listing the names of those animals should give you 20 things to add to your ‘100′ list!
Haha, one of the cats is called The Stupid One No One Likes. Naturally I give this witless creature an inordinate amount of attention out of guilt…
I didn’t realise Vic’s slogan had gone through so many changes, ‘the garden state’, ‘the place to be’, ‘on the move’…but I remember them all. Funnily, I can’t remember Sydney’s right now except for the current controversial tourist one: “Where the bloody hell are you?”
But, ahhhh, the Commonwealth Games. What joy it is to to have a major event in your city. There are many good sides to it for the community, tourism etc, but for locals, it’s can be not so good. I wasn’t here for the Sydney Olympics, but I heard getting around could be a bit of a hassle. I think CityRail would have been pushed to its capacity. But even in normal times, CityRail struggles to perfrom. I’m lucky to now only live a few stops from work (I could walk, but hate getting all sweaty before work :), but I still get exposed the to the joys and wonders of CityRail. Here too, they can be late or cancelled with no reason given. And you know if the weather is really hot, or it’s raining heavily, trains will also be messed up. The Waterfall line which I used to live on, seemed to be cancel trains on a regular basis.
As for staff, I’ve encountered some very helpful ones, and some not so helpful. Fortunately not this one. Have a look at this letter in yesterday’s Sydney Morning Herald’s Column 8:
http://search.smh.com.au/siteSearch.ac?q=column+8&ss=smh
Rosemarie Einstein of Pymble warns that buying a ticket to Wolli Creek and getting off early to get to the airport (Column 8, this week) is not the only way to get into train trouble. “I bought a CityRail ticket to travel from Pymble to Redfern, where I planned to meet a friend. While on my journey I had a mobile call from my friend, and we agreed to meet at Town Hall instead [Town Hall comes before Redfern]. I was very efficiently stopped by the ticket machine at Town Hall, which refused to open the barrier. I showed my ticket to a CityRail official, reassuring him I did not want to travel the remaining distance, for which I had paid. With great gravity, he informed me that he would allow me through this time, but that I should be aware that passengers can be fined for failing to complete their journey.”
Aw Caroline, that poor cat! I’ll adopt it!
VK - Rosemarie’s situation is a bit confusing…what on earth was their problem? So now commuters aren’t allowed to alter their travel plans? Weird!!!
When they got rid of conductors on trams and buses and introduced these scary Big Brother-type ‘transit cops’, oh the stories that used to circle around. Some people getting forced off trams and beaten for not providing either a ticket or appropriate identification. Clearly, some of these people took their jobs way too seriously.
I like Sydney’s unofficial slogan, it’s very catchy! Hope someone comes up with one equally as fitting for Melbourne!
It is a bit chaotic travel-wise in the inner city at the moment, but I’ve been told it’s also really nice to see all these little kids being taken to see events by their parents. Apparently, even the quieter train services are packed at the moment. My parents were complaining about some of the roads being sealed off in the city with no detour provided. They said there were quite a lot of people driving around in circles looking very confused.
It’s only for another week, hope it has done as much good for the city as it should have, or as expected. Especially so that I can direct my complaining elsewhere and not look so much like a Commonwealth Games ‘Scrooge’.
It rained last night, so guess what? Trains were cancelled and I watched 3 trains go by in peak hour this morning because they were too full to get into. So yeah, I was *extra* late to work!
Heh, I think moreso than confusing, Rosemarie’s situation was to do with a not so intelligent CityRail worker.
Those Big Brother types you were talking about are scary alright! Being beaten for not having the right ticket? No way. That’s just ridiculous!
Oops, “So, Where The Bloody Hell Are You.” is the one for all Australia. I had to ask (my partner) for NSW’s slogan, couldn’t remember it for the life of me. It’s…”NSW - The Premier State”. Mmmm, such an exciting slogan!
Ugh, sorry to hear you missed - or rather watched - 3 trains go by in peak hour, that’s a real piss-off. Boo!
Ah, I do recall hearing that slogan you quote as the new catch cry for promoting tourism to ‘down under’. Isn’t it on some TV advert at the moment?
Public Transport is one of my pet hates in this city. I spend hours every week travelling to far flung parts of the city. That’s hours of my life gone, and I want them back. You cannot be accused of being anti-environment for driving a car around this city, that’s for sure. One thing that is good is that I live close enough to both Uni and work to walk in- it takes just over half an hour, so I quite happily walk to work/ uni, even though I could quite easily catch the tram, happy in the knowledge that I am depriving the public transport system and its gestapo-outfitted employees of a paying customer.
However, as one shouldn’t complain without offering some sort of solution, here is my big plan. We need two massive ring rails, one of roughly 10 km radius and another about 20km radius, and even another at 30 km out in the east to connect Lilydale, Belgrave, Dandenong and Frankston.
At all the transport nodes which are created, run roughshod over those stupid heritage and save our suburbs fanatics who complain about any structure higher than 2 stories, and create higher density mixed commercial and residential zones. Now I’m not talking sky-scrapers in Ringwood, but I don’t see any problem with 10 stories. (If at this point people want to accuse me of being a right wing technocrat, let me ask you this; do you really want this city to end up like LA?) The problem with this city is that it’s just too big. The state government is trying to restrict the building of new residential estates on the city fringe. I’d stop it all together. I know this sounds a lot like ‘urban consolidation,’ and, well, it is. But urban consolidation has a bad name because it never seems to be accompanied by infrastructure consolidation. So, why not focus urban consolidation at the points where public transport is at its best.
And the beauty is, you’re creating all these mini CBD’s. You take pressure off the real CBD, (which really is a pretty cool place,) by creating all these other commercial centres and the corresponding employment opportunities, and, drum roll…. reducing the need for a great proportion of this city’s population to travel long distances.
Ok, hope that wasn’t too long and boring. It would cost a lot of money, but hey, the government seems to have huge surpluses at the moment, and they seem more interested in spending it on big expensive projects rather than essential services, so why not spend it on something functional, instead of yet another sports stadium- yes that’s right, you just heard that from sports mad bulldozer dave. By the way, I thought the games were ok, and I enjoyed the Winter Olympics too.
As you well know, oh Bulldozer, you’ve been known more than once to make me look like a raving Marxist loony, but I’ve often wondered the same thing myself, that is about having a few miniature CBDs. Seeing as the stupid urban planning morons decided it would be a great idea to make Melbourne stretch over a massive amount of land.
Why don’t they throw all caution to the wind and build a monorail, like in that episode of The Simpsons? Monorail…monorail…
Sorry, the brain’s a bit slow, that’s as sustained an intelligible argument as I can force out at present, and I do know you deserve better!
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