Daniel Bowen Blog

Somewhat to my surprise, they have announced concession availability for Tap And Go on Myki-enabled public transport across Victoria, starting on Tuesday 13th October. Good stuff. Tap And Go (bank card payment, aka contactless) was publicly trialled from March 2026, then there was a staggered roll out for all full fare users from June. It currently covers all metropolitan services, and all V/Line trains except for Albury, Benalla and Euroa – due to ongoing infrastructure works.

I wrote most of this after the 2025 Europe trip (England, France, Spain) but never completed it. Friends are currently travelling to some of the same places (yes, I’m jealous) which has reminded me to finish it: basically this is some notes for my own reference for a future trip. For three weeks in Europe, the old wheeled mid-sized (90-ish litre) suitcase was fine, along with a carry-on backpack (largish, 29 litre).

Around this time of year, I often ponder whether I still need a car. Why? It’s the car’s birthday, so the registration, insurance and the annual service all come up at the same time of year. (Okay actually it was in July; I’m a bit delayed getting some of my blog posts written.) I took it in for its annual service and they said it’s time for the eight year or 120,000 km service. Then they looked at the odometer which was at 61,000 km. So let’s just say I’m driving well below the average kilometres.

Alan Kohler does some terrific finance reporting, helping making complex concepts simple. But I think he missed the mark on this opinion piece on trams last week. He’s missed some of the history, which is vital to understanding where we are now. Let’s go through some of what he said.

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If you’re boarding the Sydney Metro (I’ll mostly use the line number M1 for short) for the first time from a CBD station, the first thing you see is the grand architecture. It’s impressive, but you also get a sense that they have designed it for scale to carry large numbers of people through the stations. In contrast with Melbourne, they have named the interchange stations after the existing Sydney Trains stations.

The Vic Coalition’s pledge to buy 25 trains capable of diesel or electric overhead power for the Melton (Ballarat line) and Wyndham Vale (Geelong line) services is an interesting idea to boost capacity and frequency for western Melbourne, with flow-on benefits for the rest of the V/Line network. Media reports and the statement itself refer to them as hybrid, but they’re probably more accurately described as bi-mode.

Trying my best to catch up on my ten year old photo posts… almost all of the photos from these two months are of the level crossing removals which were going full steam ahead in my neighbourhood in Bentleigh. By July, they had dug out the trench for the new rail line under the roads, and were starting to fill it back in again. Daytime: Night: One night I got invited to see the works up close This view from the Brewer Road bridge from early July shows just how much was going on.

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. Update: see bottom of post. 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.