Pedestrian space is for Pedestrians

Shared space has been somewhat of a catch all for lumping together different transport modes with pedestrians, but Melbourne takes it a step further with uncontrolled use of golf carts within the city.

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Squeezing out Cycling

Cycling often gets left forgotten (or wilfully ignored) in building Melbourne’s road infrastructure and the places where it already exists provides little assurance that it will remain. Breaking just a small section of a continuous route can quickly destroy its utility, but that seems to be considered an acceptable trade for minor improvements for motor vehicles.

Slapping on the Paint

Melbourne city council like to promote their support of cycling but when you look deeper its often nothing more than a charade, highly visible window dressing that has little practical value or worse makes cycling less safe as here.

Unseen vehicles in Melbourne

Melbourne city struggles with increasing transport demands year on year and steadily reducing traffic speeds, a common challenge across many major cities of the world. Moving more transport from private cars to more space efficient modes has seen roads closed and pedestrian, bicycle, and tram infrastructure grow but just as soon as space appears its quickly taken over.

Provisional Pop-up Park Preview

Melbourne City Council has been trialling a partial closure of Elizabeth St as a proposed open public space closing a single direction of the closest block to Flinders St (Station). But as implemented it’s making less room room for pedestrians rather than more.

Fuels of Choice

Much has been written on the fuel efficiency of different modes of transport but rarely are they presented to allow the reader to draw their own conclusions. Here instead is a collection of the energy costs of several forms of private transport compared on the same scale and then with efficiencies included for different energy sources.

Seasons Traffic

Christmas has come and gone for another year and despite the unique opportunity for improving car occupancy rates we still ended up with traffic jams and stationary traffic on the highways.

None shall inconvenience the Bustitution

Planned works on Melbourne’s Alamein, Belgrave, Glen Waverley and Lilydale lines affected quite a sizeable portion of the metropolitan rail network this past week. With their closure of track sections closest to the central loop busses were ferrying passengers from already densely congested areas of the city but there was apparently no need to make extra space for all these people.

Faster Trains by Skipping and Closing Stations

As Melbournes train lines increase their frequency to keep up with demand the passengers certainly appreciate the shorter waiting time and less crowding, but could we do even better? Although a few years old the train station patronage data from PTV allows some insights into how passengers as getting to the stations and from that we can estimate what effect station closures or timetable changes might have on the network.

Confirming the Expected

It has been some time since the active safety measures on this Melbourne pedestrian crossing were irrationally reinforced and now a less than subtle camera appears to assess the current situation.