@danielbowen also, related:
“Throughout this installation phase during October and November no fares will be collected from passengers to allow a seamless switchover to the new service expected for full launch in November.”
Queensland to slash public transport fares to 50 cents for six months from August. A brave experiment, Premier.
Prediction: It's never as simple as they claim. We'll probably see heavy use/crowding on the services with useful, usable timetables. Little difference on the services and in the suburbs and towns where PT is slow and infrequent - in those areas almost everyone will keep driving. https://statements.qld.gov.au/statements/100402#Queensland#PublicTransport
So it turns out at Patterson station the screens at street level hide trains departing in less than 5 minutes.
There’s no sensible reason for this. It takes about 30 seconds to walk up the ramp to the platform.
In comparing the costs of cars vs public transport, they excluded most of the costs of cars. Huh?!
'Though car ownership usually involves additional costs such as maintenance, registration and insurance, which can increase the total cost of ownership, for this story we only considered petrol and toll costs'
For anybody who uses #Sonos, you may want to disable auto updates for the app (if it's not too late) - the new revamped S2 app breaks some important features including accessibility, search of local music libraries, alarms... and so far there's no official way to revert to the old version. https://www.stuff.tv/news/why-the-tale-of-sonos-revamped-app-is-a-cautionary-one/
@timrichards@luciedigitalni@danielbowen@ThermiteBeGiants precisely… but equally damning when comparing the size and complexity of Victorian/Melbourne system to one tram and a few buses in ACT. Supposed to be possible to use credit cards in Victoria in 2025, but like all these projects (including in ACT) take that a large scoop of salt.
I wrote this in March - I'm glad I did, because it helped my thinking around the issue of transport and the cost of living crisis.
If governments really want to provide relief to household budgets, more station car parks or discounted public transport fares make little difference.
To make a big impact they need to provide options that make PT/walking/cycling good enough that a household can run fewer cars.
@danielbowen Good read. Would be great if we could get politicians thinking along these lines, of helping families reduce their number of cars. Good for reducing carbon emissions too.
@paezha@danielbowen Well noticed! Over the last 2 decades I have become convinced that the transition in the transport system is driven by governments of large cities. In NL, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht etc. have constantly been setting the agenda for national politics to react on. No significant policy has come from a ministry in countries like ours. Unlike Scotland, Norway, and New Zealand.
Getting re-elected does not require neoliberal populist short termism. Also see Anne Hidalgo's Paris
Blog: Old photos from ten years ago, April 2014, including this pic of a press release from 1997 found during a clean-up, announcing the very first official public transport web site for Victoria, "VicTrip". https://danielbowen.com/2024/04/30/old-photos-from-april-2014/