This article claims “the cost of collecting and policing fares eats up most – if not all – of the revenue collected”. My sense is this is incorrect, except for smaller towns and cities, or places that charge stupidly low amounts. Anyone have any data?

Properties include Mould Kent Road, Infested-by-a-Vine Street, Claiming Excessive Bond Street, and Water Works (but has a slight rust discolouration)

Context for non-Oz readers: 40 actual nazis stormed an Indigenous cultural site in Melbourne earlier this year, but we're to think that the epistemic permission to massacre a cultural event is produced when undergrads insist their unis don't finance genocide.

It's been incredible to watch how rapidly the conversation about the Bondi Beach attack has pivoted to "it's the fault of anti-genocide protestors" with no reflection whatsoever on the role of actual neonazi March for Australia gronks and the incels who stormed Camp Sovereignty a few months back.

Please, join me in my latest hobby: emailing polite but stern complaints to the IT support desk whenever they push updates that reinstalls friggin Copilot.

I would be interested to see Old Mate's take on the precision/reliability of business cases for suburban arterial upgrade program (i.e., road widening in the suburbs). Ain't going to happen, though: we would never subject road building to the same level of scrutiny.

Haymarket in Melbourne is a great example of intersection management that crams as many cursed cars through as possible, while also slowing trams down. 2011 changes saw general traffic lanes added and lights installed. Previously, trams had priority; now, they wait for lights.

A 4WD driver has killed a child in Melbourne's north-eastern suburbs. You can be sure the ensuing discussion will focus on the excessive power of e-bikes, and not on the excessive size and power of 4WDs or the repeated failure of the State government to provide a safe environment for bike riders.

Improved bus services are welcome (in the sense that something is better than nothing) but these improvements to the west's buses are about providing the bare minimum to keep up with population growth, rather than providing a robust alternative to driving.

Mmmm delicious… sand?

What’s the problem? Most car trips are less than 10km. Use public transport or walk or bike.

Incoming changes to Route 57 through North Melbourne to accommodate G-class trams. Positives: heaps of parking reductions, more space for tram passengers to wait, heaps of parking reductions. Negatives: some stops moved away from intersections, changes don't provide level boarding.

So, y’know how the Metro tunnel opening on Sunday was this fun day with gunzels and normies alike being all happy and joyful about a major infrastructural link finally opening… Reckon we’ll repeat that when the West Gate Tunnel opens?

The new Swanston St Railway Tunnel went through a few routing changes - a good thing for a project this size. Not shown is how the tunnel was going to be delivered in stages: first from Footscray to Domain, then Domain to Caulfield later.

Flemington Racecourse turn the frigging music down its Sunday night FFS.

Late addition to the negatives part of my metro tunnel review is that we bought cheap plastic-looking HCMTs instead of these gorgeous soviet contraptions. There’s still time to get it right; we could order these for the Sydney to Newcastle high speed line that is totally getting built.

++ Metro Tunnel Thinkings🚇💭 + way smoother ride than Sydney’s very bumpy metro, + some nice touches at the stations, especially with natural light at Arden & Parkville, + FSS to Town Hall transfer was faster/easier than expected, very dank passageway, + more of an S-Bahn/RER than a metro

The sheer sense of entitlement to public space that car drivers demonstrate is really quite mind blowing. It’s unthinkable that one would pull over on the road, because that would disrupt all that is holy i.e., traffic flow. Pedestrians and cyclists? Fuck ‘em.

Arden Telephone Machine

This information suggests that Metro Tunnel services stop at North Melbourne some of the time, or that they are at least physically able to. By this logic, Metro Tunnel trains also run express through Kensington and Macaulay stations.

Ah man they just had to insist that the “new” stations have distinct names and identities, didn’t they 🤦🏼‍♂️

These two nightmare-inducing mascots are the true marvels of science and engineering to emerge from the Metro tunnel project (and NOT the twin tunnels that reinforce CBD primacy). Let's petition to make them permanent.

I for one welcome our new Netro Trains Nelbourne overlords

Ah yes, this must be where AVs fix so-called congestion.

Concourse open, no trains running.

Wait, I have a solution to this. In high demand corridors, I’ll run higher capacity robotaxis every five or so minutes along a fixed route with fixed stops, and people can get in and out with ease. Such innovative disruption! Someone in Silicon Valley give me ten billion dollars please!

Good news: Victoria passed legislation increasing the price and expanding the geographical coverage of Melbourne's Congestion Levy. Even better: Labor actually negotiated with the Greens to secure $15,000,000/year from the increased levy to go towards walking and cycling projects.

ah i see microsoft is at the stage of forcing you to have a stupid copilot icon in office and removing the option to turn it off

This would absolutely save heaps more lives on country roads than "driver education". Also, this statistical nugg: "a reduction in the urban default speed limit from 60km/h to 50km/h ... has been estimated to have reduced fatalities by 50% in Victoria, by 37% in WA and 26% in SA"

Nearly got cleaned up by an SUV with personalised plates “B3STIE” when getting off a tram on Racecourse Rd. The idiot driver looked completely confused, stopped briefly to let me past, and then started driving past the open tram again.

This is the so-called free market at work. The invisible hand is just some capitalist goon demanding money off taxpayers and claiming it’s some amazing naturalist logic that shouldn’t be interfered with.

Parking is the one, true equaliser contemporary society. Even absurdly wealthy doctors and architects will start behaving like absolute lunatics - brandishing weapons, pet death threats, frothing at the mouth - over their "entitlement" to a parking space.

Not to defend the stupid robot car, but so-called “intelligent” human drivers get up to this kind of nonsense all the time.

Also extremely friggin loud and disruptive for the thousands of people who live nearby.

Better buses for the west? Nah. Shitty AI chatbots? Absolutely!

I give it approximately three days of operations before one of these robotaxis, carrying literally nobody, seizes up in front of a tram crammed with 150 people, because self-drive still struggles with basic shit like turning corners.

If you want to install a protected bike lane, every Thomas, Richard, and Harold who runs a CBD cafe needs to be consulted for five months. Meanwhile, when techbros want to trash our city's streets by flooding them with empty taxis, then it's "please, go ahead, that's progress!"

Maybe if these CBD buildings were wearing brighter clothes and not gawking at their phones, they wouldn’t have been crashed into by a car.

The little train that couldn’t.

CSL and Optus (and others) pay millions to executives *because* they manage to avoid company tax, not despite.

Fantastic example of how mega infrastructure planning gaslights communities: "Sarah Tartakover ... said she felt betrayed because she had wanted to trust that fewer trucks on local streets would mean cleaner air. 'Instead, it could be worse for me because pollution will be condensed'".

Meanwhile, in Melbourne…

Ah yep. Made the mistake of trying to use public transport on a Sunday morning without checking the timetable.

This is exactly what the Village of London needs: thousands more cars driving around empty.

David Pocock, rubgy guy turned politician, has been kicked out of a club comprised of politicians and people who pay for access to politicians in order to influence them for being too political.

I would add to this otherwise good list that connections between services need to be centred in service and infrastructure planning - no more station renovations or platform stops that make transferring between services harder.

it's one standard gauge platform, michael, how much could it cost?

Counter-proposal: Tear down/fill in the CityLink and stop planning new mega-roads that enable more and more and more and more and more and more traffic to be vomited onto local streets.

Free PT on the weekends during Soft Launch Summer as a “thank you” for years of disruption. That’s nice, provided you don’t need to be anywhere on time on a Sunday morning.