Daniel Bowen Blog

The picture below shows departures from Flinders Street Station this morning Sunday just after 9am. What’s special about this is the 40 minute waits that passengers hate are finally gone. They had been introduced in 1978 when Melbourne’s population was about half its current level, public transport patronage was falling, and Victorian Railways were desperately looking for savings. They cut then 30 minute frequencies to 40.

Let me take a pause blogging my recent Sydney trip for this: Proper PDF timetables for Melbourne’s trains are around, but quite hard to find. The standard on-demand generated PDFs found on the Transport Victoria web site are customised to the specific date you ask for (and take into account planned bus replacements and service changes). If you want the “regular” timetable you need to select the date furthest into the future you can find.

Sydney day two: I was keen to try the L2 or L3 light rail; these lines opened in 2018 and 2019 but were under construction during my previous visit in early 2018. The trams have certainly transformed George Street, which used to be a traffic sewer awash with buses, and is now a CBD pedestrian and transit mall. I knew the trams would be partially closed over the weekend, so Friday seemed like the day to try them. The problem is we had nowhere we wanted to go on either of these routes.

Long time readers would know that I like to blog my holidays. If you’re here for the transport content, there’ll be some, but that’s not necessarily the focus. It was time for a break from Melbourne’s winter. In 2024 it was the Far North Queensland and Thursday Island, in 2025 it was Brisbane. This year: Sydney. At the airport going through security I (not for the first time) failed to completely empty my pockets. A handkerchief was left behind. They told me to go back and put it in a separate tray.

I’m still catching up on my old photos from ten years ago. Here’s June 2016. We’d visited Singapore at the start of June for my cousin’s wedding. But via some contacts I also got to look at a construction site for the Thomson-East Coast line. Back in Melbourne, the local level crossing removals at Ormond, McKinnon and Bentleigh were pressing ahead.

You might recall a few months ago I got to see one of the new X’Trapolis 2 trains. Over the weekend the government did another event for public transport influencers (for want of a better term) for the G-class trams. We got to see one in the flesh at the new Maidstone Depot – as well as a quick look around the depot itself.

This video on the PTUA feed yesterday was mostly compiled from stuff I filmed in Barcelona last year: It is obviously not intended to be a direct comparison between Barcelona and Melbourne. They’re different cities, though Melbourne and Barcelona have very similar metropolitan populations (5.44m vs 5.79m). Barcelona is a bit less than half the geographical size (9993 square km vs 4268), meaning the population density is about double there. When comparing rail networks it’s a bit complicated.

The next stages of Tap And Go rollout have arrived. Announced yesterday: regional buses from this Sunday Melbourne metropolitan buses from next week You can expect to see some Myki card readers switched and displaying Mastercard and Visa logos before that; I’m told it’ll happen in several phases. Apparently the dispersed nature of all the different bus depots is part of the challenge. But once done, this will complete the Tap And Go rollout across the existing Myki network.

V/Line was a mess this week thanks to using an ARTC system that relies on Telstra mobile, which had a major outage on Wednesday. Plus apparently the backup satellite connection didn’t work because the on-train equipment thought the mobile connection was fine. It raised an interesting question: how many people are affected by a major outage like this? The annual patronage (for regional train and coach, 26.4 million in 2024-25, expected 29.1 million in 2025-26) doesn’t really tell us.

Very busy at the moment. Still catching up in my ten year old photo posts, here’s May (ish) 2016. Next Stop Mars – seems a tad unlikely. Meeting the cardboard PM The CBD shopping centre that started as “Australia On Collins” was renovated to become “St Collins Lane”. That started off promisingly, but obviously wasn’t getting enough patons, so they desperately tried turning it into a maze by running the escalators in stupid directions, which backfired completely, driving people away.