Clean Transport 101: Reduce, Replace, Repower

Transport is Australia's third-largest, and fastest-growing, source of emissions. If we're to have any chance of keeping climate change to 1.5°C, we have to urgently clean up our transport system - but how? 

The legacy of Ballarat's tramways

The shape of Ballarat's tram network in 1971

On Sunday 19 September 1971, 50 years ago today, the last ever revenue service on Ballarat's tramways ran from Lydiard Street to Sebastopol. The mayors of Sebastopol and Ballarat ceremoniously piloted it back to the depot, and the transition of Ballarat's public transport network to motor buses was complete, with the tramways entering their preservation era. But the legacy of the tramways echoed through Ballarat for many years after, and can still be heard today. 

Are Trackless Trams the solution to our problems?

The CRRC Autonomous Rail Rapid Transit system, aka Trackless Tram (via N509Z)

Plenty of lobby groups and government bodies have floated the idea of installing "trackless trams" in cities around the world, but at the time of writing, the original 6.5km test track in Zhuzhou has only been succeeded by one line in revenue service, a 17.7km line in Yibin. This presents a huge problem - with basically no real-world examples to look at, people can make huge claims about how great (and especially how cheap) this technology is, and it's hard to sort fact from fiction. 

But the Federal Minister for Cities and Urban Infrastructure, Alan Tudge, announced a while back that the government would fund a business case for a trackless tram in Perth; and it's something that various lobby groups like to float for places closer to home like Geelong and Ballarat from time to time as well. So I'm going to do my best to cut through the hype, and see how they really stack up. 

Amsterdam Lelylaan: a model for level crossing removals

The current spate of level crossing removals means that more stations are being rebuilt around Melbourne than at any time in living memory. These stations, by virtue of the selection process, are generally adjacent to roads - and often those roads are major public transport corridors, whether for trams or buses. Perhaps because we've gone from zero to 100 so quickly, and therefore don't have a ton of station design experience in our local public service, some of these new stations haven't been ideal from an urban design perspective - in fact in some cases they are worse than the ground-level stations they're replacing. The Dutch, however, are very good at this, so I thought I'd go through a case study to see what lessons Melbourne can learn from it.

Travel Diaries: United Kingdom (Part 4)

Edinburgh Waverley Station

Why service levels matter in accessible transport

Travel Diaries: Amsterdam

So - after wending my way up through Spain, France and Belgium, I'd finally arrived in my new home in Amsterdam. It's taken me a while to get around to writing these blogs, so rather than just my first impressions, I can give my observations collected over the last several months.

Reviving Bridge Mall

There's been a lot of talk in Ballarat circles lately about how to revitalise Bridge Mall - and (somewhat coincidentally) it's happening around the same time there's been a lot of debate about the effects of various street-shaping projects on Sturt and Mair Streets. Many people are concerned about how desolate Bridge Mall can get, and worried that the same sort of thing could happen on surrounding streets - so it's worth discussing the kinds of things that help or hinder the vitality of a street.

Bridge Mall in 2016

PTV's new university shuttles

via Public Transport Victoria

With the University semester starting, PTV have announced a raft of improvements to Melbourne's bus network to better serve University staff and students. Before we look at the specific routes, it's worth touching on why they are necessary.

New PTV livery for the VLocity

The new PTV-branded VLocity livery (via VicSig)

VicSig tweeted a picture earlier today of the first VLocity to wear the new PTV-branded livery, which no doubt is being prepared for the grand opening of the Ballarat and Bendigo legs of Regional Rail Link next month.

Railway Archaeology: The Ballarat Tramways

Trams have become pretty closely associated with Melbourne nowadays - I know when I was younger I thought of them as a uniquely "Melbourne" phenomenon. At 250km of track, Melbourne has the largest tram network in the world, with only a few major European cities even coming close. But things were not always this way - many other cities in Australia had tramways, with Sydney's network being even bigger than Melbourne's. But most of Australia's tramways were ripped up during the 20th Century, and have by and large been forgotten until quite recently.