It seems bizarre that anyone would think that reducing public transport fares is a good way to reduce cost of living pressures. It's not going to get people out of their cars because it's a minor saving on the already huge savings of not driving.
So this becomes a handout to people that can already take public transport.
$150 million could get you a lot of extra services. Either expanding services to places not currently catered to or expanding frequency on exisiting routes.
If you want people out of cars and on to public transport then accessibility, convenience and flexibility are what you need to target. Affordability isn't as important because public transport is already always cheaper than the alternative.
@keira_reckons This is the thing that I find most disappointing: I can catch either a single tram or a bus to my folks' place (which include only 20min or 10min total walk time one way, respectively), and it's still less worthwhile than driving.
@mattcen Public transport can be a fixed cost too making each individual trip no additional cost.
But If this is the only public transport trip you would make then it's very unlikely you'd do it even at the lower price. A trip cost savings of $0.80 probably doesn't make up for the habit shift required.
But I do agree that they should bring back the short trip ticket.
"...most intersection are unsafe to have an automatic green man, as pedestrians j-walk and it creates a dangerous situation with possible filtered right turners. A scenario where people see a green man and run to cross the road creates one of the most dangerous situations, with regards to left and right turners.
Studies conducted by VicRoads and the Australian Road Research Board have proven the safety issues with the above."
I contacted VicRoads to ask about making a pointless pedestrian crossing green automatically when it's safe to cross and their response was very telling.
@augustusbrown It's the middle pedestrian/cyclist crossing across the tram tracks in the median when Punt Rd turns in Fitzroy St in St Kilda.
No interaction with turning traffic at all.
It's kind of pointless because it's just tram tracks, but it's also silly because it's always red even when the trams have a red and the cars have a green.
This crossing is where a cyclist was hit 2 days ago by a b-double truck while crossing with a green light.
The cyclist was told he is unlikely to ever be able to walk again.
The safety of this crossing relies on truck drivers turning on to a motorway on-ramp to expect and look for cyclists and for cyclists to know that trucks will be doing that while cyclists have a green light.
The most important take away is just how little space 16 cyclists take up while waiting at the lights. It's barely noticeable. It always seems like there are lots of cars, but when you count them there are actually very few.
You need really large numbers of cyclists before they're generally visible.
It's no wonder people say 'nobody uses the bike lanes' because if you're not actually counting it feels like nobody is.
Bike Route Buddy's great video of some Geelong examples of the intentionally sabotaged bike lanes that make up the majority of bike lanes in Victoria.
'Car door death-zone' bike lanes that encourage drivers to illegally close pass are worse than no bike lanes at all.
The 'banana' and 'cone' bicycle intersection from @BicycleDutch
Having a crossing that starts wider (to allow many bicycles to wait) and narrows in the intersection.
We do this sometimes with car infrastructure too, where we have two lanes before an intersection that immediately merge in to one on the other side of the intersection.
Of course this design is much more effective with bicycles.
@jessta Articulated busses can seat around 78 people with no-one standing, depending on configuration.
So 500 spaces is roughly as many commuters as just 6.5 full articulated buses.
Upgrade some of the local bus routes to a 10-minute service with articulated busses, and you'd probably find you end up with more commuters, at a fraction of the cost.
I grew up in cooperative social housing. The model is that a not-for-profit organisation (with government funding) buys houses within a community area and rents them to people within that community. Rents are capped at 25% of the household income or at cost (which ever is lower).
The people within this community manage rent collection and maintenance requests.
Tenancy is long term so tenants have leeway in making modifications to the house. Even major modifications are possible with consultation with the community group.
This gives people that majority of benefits of home ownership without having to be property investors.
The not-for-profit can use the equity in their property portfolio to purchase or build new properties.
It's a great model for housing for people across a wide range of income levels.
Chronic under funding in the past 25yrs hasn't allowed these cooperatives to grow with population growth so this option isn't available to most people.
Most people don't actually want to own a house, they just want location stability and the ability to paint their walls.