michaelwyres.com.au | musings of a geek

No Problem with New Train Line

Now, I’m not normally one to defend Victoria’s rail network – a network that is bursting at the seams, and utterly frustrating for us regular commuters – but the following article shows that the Public Transport Users Association (PTUA) has absolutely zero foresight when it comes to the Regional Rail Link (RRL) as part of the Victorian Transport Plan.

To me, they just do not seem to understand the flow on effects.

Mr Westcott said Geelong passengers wanting to transfer to the City Loop would be forced to change trains at Footscray, from where they would only be able to use Sydenham line trains to gain access to the loop, because Werribee trains travelling though Footscray only ran direct to Flinders St.

“The Sydenham line is the most overcrowded in Melbourne, so forcing Geelong passengers to squeeze on to these already packed trains in peak hour is a recipe for chaos,” Mr Westcott said.

As a backgrounder, the current situation is that regional trains from Geelong, Ballarat, and Bendigo share rail lines with metropolitan trains on the Werribee, Williamstown, and Sydenham lines. Any hold up with a regional train effects the metropolitan trains (and of course, vice versa). The RRL is designed to provide a dedicated track for the regional trains to run on, taking them away from the metropolitan lines. This has the effect of allowing more trains to run on both regional and metropolitan lines – as they would no longer need to compete for track access.

Paul Westcott says that with no access to North Melbourne station for RRL, passengers wishing to transfer to the metropolitan network to use the City Loop – (which they would previously have accessed from North Melbourne) – would be forced “to squeeze on to these already packed trains in peak hour” at Footscray.

Mr Westcott, the trains are packed at North Melbourne anyway! While I do not currently need to use the City Loop, in the past I have often had to wait for three or four completely full services to pass by at North Melbourne, before a train with space available arrived.

Further, Footscray is the PREVIOUS station, so at that point, they should be LESS crowded, and given the RRL will free up track access for metropolitan services, there will be more metropolitan trains which they can board at Footscray, which reduces crowding even more. Passengers would also have the option to travel all the way to Southern Cross and switch to a City Loop service there – since Southern Cross is actually part of the City Loop!

As for North Melbourne station, exactly where would Mr Westcott propose more platforms be built? There’s not exactly any room to build even two more platforms to serve the RRL. In a perfect world, you would build new platforms at North Melbourne and at Footscray. This is not a perfect world.

Changing onto more (and less crowded) City Loop trains at Footscray is actually a definite plus. Travelling all the way to Southern Cross and catching the City Loop from there – (remembering the train wouldn’t be stopping at North Melbourne) – would be negligibly different. Given the regional trains won’t be affected by delays in the metropolitan network, travelling times should be more reliable, and absolutely more predictable.

Now, if we can just stop all these new regional trains from breaking down, we’ll be cooking with gas!

V/Line: Time to Develop a Clue!

Now, I do not – and would not – pretend to understand the finer intricacies of the management of a fleet of trains, but I would like to think that some common sense would come into it – somewhere. Hopefully.

Alas, events at Southern Cross Station on Friday evening leave me wondering if “common sense” even appears in the V/Line Operations Manual. It does not appear to do so.

Service number 8235 (otherwise known as the 17:29 Southern Cross to Marshall) was once again found to be in disarray – alarming given that it (along with service number 8229, otherwise known as the 16:40 Southern Cross to Marshall) are supposed to be the “flagship services” on the Geelong line.

Pfft!

Here’s a quick rundown of the sequence last night. At approximately 5:00pm, a train arrived from Ballarat, consisting of a single 3VL DMU, number 32. Passengers alighted, and it seemed ready to form the rear of service 8235. Here it is at 5:10pm, still standing on the platform:

One minute later, it left, disappearing into the yard, never to be seen again. Here is the empty platform:

It did however, wait at the far end of the platform for about a minute, before disappearing:

At 5:19pm – a mere ten minutes before the scheduled departure, a pair of empty V’Locity DMUs arrived on the platform – 2VL03, and 3VL27. So we have five carriages of the normal seven carriage service. Okay, some progress.

We just have to wait for another 2VL to arrive, right? Wrong!

At 5:25pm, just four minutes from departure, a boarding call is made for the five carriages, with clearly no extra carriages to be delivered to complete the service. A seven-carriage load of passengers cram into a five-carriage service. Squeezy!

Now, here’s where the annoyance comes from. Leaving the station, I counted six – yes SIX – vacant V’Locity units sitting in the yard, seemingly not doing much. The original 3VL23 was nowhere to be seen. 3VL35 was one of the empty, yard bound units, as seen here:

There were three other units nearby, and two more sitting in the wash road at the EDI Rail maintenance depot.

I don’t understand why the original 3VL23 couldn’t have stayed, and have 3VL35 join it for a total of six carriages. Still not seven, but better than five.

Okay – maybe 3VL23 was declared “defective” and even 3VL35 might have been “defective” also. What about the other six units? Were they ALL declared defective?

If they were – why are so many almost new trains breaking down? If they weren’t, why couldn’t we have some of them – or even one of them – to form something resembling a full service?

The annoying part is, yesterday’s service 8235 will be declared to have run, and to have run “on time”. So it won’t affect their performance figures. But only five sevenths of the service ran and ran on time!

Most frustratingly of all, there were no announcements made. No explanation for the reduced service, and no apology for the reduced service. Just the usual and trite – “welcome aboard this V/Line service, we hope you have a pleasant journey!”. Nice customer service!

Try telling that to the people crammed into doorways, and sitting on the floor in the aisles. We’re not stupid V/Line – lift your game and stop hiding behind rubbery performance figures!

Lots of Rain Equals Stupid Drivers

Melbourne and much of Victoria is currently cleaning up after a series of massive rainstorms yesterday afternoon/evening. I personally got “heavily saturated” on a couple of occasions heading home from the office – including an entertaining train ride!

It never ceases to amaze me how stupid some drivers can be – in particular, the following cab driver – honestly, no callout is so desperate that you have to risk writing off your cab.

In normal conditions, this underpass looks like the following picture – just to give you an idea of just how deep a body of water this driver attempted to navigate actually was!

Not the best of decisions!

Internet Censorship: Politician Education Required

Further demonstration that “they do not understand what they are messing with” came today, with the political establishment in this country completely missing the point in regards to what a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack is designed to achieve.

Quoting a release from the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy (DBCDE):

A spokeswoman for Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said the attacks were not a legitimate form of political statement. They were “totally irresponsible and potentially deny services to the Australian public”.

No, really?

That’s the idea. A DDoS attack is – by definition – designed to “deny service”. In the case of a commercial operation, a sustained DDoS incident can ultimately – and sometimes quite drastically – cripple revenue streams, with potential online customers unable to engage the organisation through e-commerce channels. By attacking phone and fax systems, other inbound communications systems are also crippled. This can be EXTREMELY costly to a company, and DDoS attacks are normally carried out to make a stand against an unpopular policy or practice of the organisation being attacked. They are designed to hit the bottom line – as they say “money talks”.

Very few businesses have the resources to take a sustained hit, so most give up, cave into the pressure, and alter their policies. Whether or not that is fair is a completely different argument.

So, this group is attacking the government, and preventing them from providing their services to the public – in protest of the upcoming internet filtering legislation, and banning of certain pornographic material, in an attempt to appease the various lobby groups. They are seeking to “cripple” the government’s ability to provide its services, perhaps prevent people from being able to pay due taxes online. This hits the government’s bottom line.

Internet users are a powerful lobby group also – as the government is about to learn. I don’t support the actions of this group, as I believe it will do more damage to our fight for internet freedom than good – the average Joe on the street will see this as a bunch of “pissed off kiddies” – but it’s no different than anti-war protesters marching up and down the street and disrupting people from carrying out day-to-day business. Joe won’t understand this, but this is a legitimate form of political statement – much like laying down in front of a military tank.

The government saying it is not a legitimate form of political statement is a rapid-fire response to get to the mainstream media, and make it sound like it is not.

However, if nothing else, maybe Minister Conroy and Prime Minister Rudd might start seeing the point, but I won’t be holding my breath.

Ever Wondered Why Connex Was Always Late?

Connex – the recently replaced operator of Melbourne’s suburban rail network – had a reputation in its final years for excessive numbers of late and cancelled services. Ever wondered why?

Well, now you know!

Bathurst 1992: The Wet Finish

Jumping back into the archives for a bit – here’s the famous (and some say controversial) finish to the 1992 Tooheys 1000.

It was a sad day for me – one of my racing heroes, Denny Hulme died on live television before my eyes that day – of a heart-attack at the wheel early in the race. Given the mood, many people just wanted to get this race over and done with, and move on. It’s certainly the only Bathurst I’ve wanted to “hurry up and finish”.

That wish was granted when the rain intervened, and the notoriety of this day in Australian sport was born.

Newsflash! Update!

Hot on the heels of yesterday’s hilarious video of a Macquarie worker being sprung looking at porn on the job in the background of a live news cross, comes an even more hilarious advertising hook by rival HSBC.

Here’s the video again:

And here is the advertisement that appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald today from HSBC, who state “We spend more time looking at your assets!”:

Absolute genius!

Landmark Internet Copyright Ruling

The Australian Federal Court has dealt a massive blow to the copyright infringement crusaders, ruling today that the provision of internet service does not represent the approval of copyright infringement, or the responsibility to police potentially copyright infringing activities in the provision of that internet service.

Pending any possible appeals, of course, the precedent is now set.

Geelong Stokesvertiser

Once again, the Geelong Advertiser has dramatically skewed it’s news coverage towards a single story about the Geelong Football Club – yesterday’s arrest of Mathew Stokes on charges of purchasing, possessing and trafficking cocaine.

No doubt a major story, and worthy of coverage. But here’s the list of stories deemed “headlines” on their website:

The first four are probably fair enough, covering four different and important angles on the story. Never to let a GFC story go by without overkill, the Advertiser also gives us:

Fluff pieces one and all. Surely all of these could have been combined into a single “Universal Support for Mathew Stokes” story, or at very least not be declared “headlines”?

I’m sure this will sell them a few newspapers in this town, but they would have anyway, even with half the number of separate stories. It’s just too much on one story, and too much fluff! Once this case gets to trial – (presuming the case gets through committal and goes to trial) – the local population will be heavily affected by the pounding off fluff news about how “wonderful” he is.

People in this town will want him to be innocent, simply because he’s a Geelong player! Where is an unbiased jury going to come from? Not Geelong. Not good enough Advertiser!

Newsflash!

In a quite literal “Newsflash” – keep an eye on the guy “working” at his computer in the left of the frame in this live-to-air news cross.

I particularly love his reaction when his colleague points out that the live cross is underway. Pure comedy gold.