@LovesTha@Railison@Baku Build more trains, increase train frequency, and expand the rail network.
That’s a real solution, not greenwashing with busses that are powered by hydrogen extracted from fossil-fuels.
The area we can have new (IT) tech solve is more efficient house to station links. Current bus solutions aren’t very efficient: weird routes and frequently nearly empty. The Flexibus trial is interesting, but too limited in scope.
@LovesTha@ajsadauskas@Railison@Baku Level crossing removal is good for a whole bunch of reasons, including (by my understanding) that it’s a necessary requirement before you can get started with high frequency trains. Same goes for modernising the signalling system that IIRC was designed in the 1970s.
Victoria’s public transport has had decades of dismal stagnation following the failed neoconservative experiment with privatisation. There was bare minimum of maintenance and little in the way of updates until recently. Lately, we’ve had serious effort put into level crossing removal, new trains, signalling upgrades, route extensions, and tunneling. Good to see progress but we still have a long way to go if we want Melbourne to have a modern metro.
@LovesTha @Railison @Baku Build more trains, increase train frequency, and expand the rail network.
That’s a real solution, not greenwashing with busses that are powered by hydrogen extracted from fossil-fuels.
@BinChicken @Railison @Baku more trains in Melbourne means more tracks, which takes time.
The area we can have new (IT) tech solve is more efficient house to station links. Current bus solutions aren’t very efficient: weird routes and frequently nearly empty. The Flexibus trial is interesting, but too limited in scope.
@BinChicken @Railison @Baku that said we could have better weekend and evening train services by just employing more drivers.
Authored while waiting for a train during a 30m schedule.
@LovesTha @BinChicken @Railison @Baku Here’s a link to the timetable for Sydney’s Metro Northwest line, which runs driverless trains: https://transportnsw.info/documents/timetables/93-M-Sydney-Metro-North-West-20230929.pdf
Note that even off-peak or on weekends, the frequency is every 10 minutes, and every four minutes during the peak.
The technology is there to do far more frequent driverless trains, but Victoria hasn’t invested in it.
@ajsadauskas @BinChicken @Railison @Baku I think it’s not crazy to remove level crossings before going driverless trains. So we could be on that path.
@LovesTha @ajsadauskas @Railison @Baku Level crossing removal is good for a whole bunch of reasons, including (by my understanding) that it’s a necessary requirement before you can get started with high frequency trains. Same goes for modernising the signalling system that IIRC was designed in the 1970s.
Victoria’s public transport has had decades of dismal stagnation following the failed neoconservative experiment with privatisation. There was bare minimum of maintenance and little in the way of updates until recently. Lately, we’ve had serious effort put into level crossing removal, new trains, signalling upgrades, route extensions, and tunneling. Good to see progress but we still have a long way to go if we want Melbourne to have a modern metro.