Randomness 24

I went gunzelling last night. I seem to have a recent desire to randomly gunzel Nightrider routes. Having already done the Belgrave (but not Rowville), Craigieburn, Croydon (but not Lilydale), Rosebud and St Albans routes, I decided to do a couple more.

Because I got dropped off in Windsor at 8:30pm and got a 64 tram to Swanston St, I decided to do a bit of gunzelling in the city to fill in time. At around 10:30pm, I got on a train to Essendon, from where I boarded route 483 to Sunbury, which only runs at night on Fridays and Saturdays. Whether it needs to run at night on weekends is a different story - there were no other pax onboard.

At Sunbury, I waited the 20 minutes until midnight for the Nightrider back into the city, which is a 77 minute trip via St Albans. I then got the Werribee Nightrider outbound and back in, filling in another couple of hours. By this point it was 3:20am.

From there, I was planning to do the Eltham and Dandenong routes (I would've arrived at Dandenong at 6:30am). I was tired and felt a bit nauseous after going over the West Gate twice, so I boarded the Nightrider back to St Albans. I alighted at Main Rd/Station Rd, only a couple of km from my house, but I decided to be lazy and get picked up so I ended up arriving home at 4:30am instead of 5am.

So I've now done half of all Nightrider routes. I might do some more next weekend, too. I'm thinking of getting the 11:27pm trip in from Croydon via Belgrave and Rowville, then 1:30am to Epping and back, 3:30am to Eltham and back, and 5:30am to Dandenong next Saturday night. If I do all of them, I would've done all routes except Croydon to Lilydale and Deer Park to Melton, which I can do on a separate trip.

Let's see what happens though. ;)

Randomness 11

I'm bored, and I feel like going tram gunzelling tomorrow.

That is all.

Some updates

I haven't really gotten out on PT much this week really, apart from going to uni a few times.

I have, however, done a small amount of travelling around the CBD and western suburbs (the highlights being getting off Kensington station, then route 402 from Kensington to Grattan/Swanston Sts one day, and another day going to West Maribyrnong), which means I have now been everywhere on the tram network (since I went to rt. 5 Malvern terminus some time a couple of weeks ago, which I neglected to mention).

And that's about it. I did however get dragged along on a drive to Southland via North Brighton and Sandringham, which was interesting to say the least. A lot of houses in Brighton are massive! Enough about that.

I've made a small addition to the blog layout: there are now a pile of links on the right sidebar that go to various transport-related sites, one being my Railpage photo gallery. Yeah, there's a few photos of trams in there that I took while walking from the corner of Harbour Esp./Latrobe St, Docklands to Spencer Street station via Latrobe and Spencer Sts. I also have a pile of photos of buildings that I might post somewhere eventually.

Now, hopefully in the coming week I can actually get out more, since I still have 74 stations that I have left to go to, which means I'm not quite on track of getting to my target of only 50. And I also need to use the remaining four trips on my 10x2hr Metcard, but maybe I could save them for some other time when I really really need them.

Erm, I also want to go to Adelaide when their new trams enter service (and since I also have a pile of timetables I want to get hold of). They look so cool. But that's enough ranting for today I think.

Monthly Plan 1

Apologies for not updating for a few days. I haven't really been anywhere worth mentioning, unless a routine long car trip to Chadstone and Southland last night counts.

I was thinking earlier about the amount of travelling I do on public transport, which is probably nearly 2000km every month (or an average of about 66km a day), considering the number of long trips I make. For example, on one day in September 2004, I did a day trip to Frankston, then back to Richmond, and to Belgrave and return.

Also, according to my last count, about three days ago, there are 93 train stations (not including General Motors) in the Metcard area that I haven't gotten on or off a train at. By the end of September, I'm hoping to reduce that number to less than 50. Which means I have a lot of travelling to do in the next month.

In the next month, I'm planning to have gone to every station on the Werribee, Williamstown, Sydenham, Broadmeadows, Upfield, Epping, Sandringham, Glen Waverley and Alamein lines, that I haven't yet been to, as well as Hawksburn. That's a grand total of 44 stations, or 1-2 every day for the next four weeks.

I'm planning to have been to every single station in the Metcard area, as well as everywhere on the tram network, by the end of this year. I'll see how well I go at that.

For some reason this entry has taken me an hour to type.

Things I love 1

One of the things I love about suburbia is the amount of retail expansion that takes place. For example, I went to Highpoint today, where a major expansion that will add some 60 shops and 15000m² of retail space, is occuring.

Highpoint, one of Melbourne's largest shopping centres, possibly the largest, is located in the suburb and City of Maribyrnong, and is relatively easy to get to by public transport even on weekends (compared to other major shopping centres, like Doncaster Shoppingtown, anyway), since there are a few fairly frequent routes running to it from Footscray:

• bus 223, which runs every 15 minutes on Saturday and every 30 minutes on Sunday until midnight.
• bus 406, which runs every 20 minutes on Saturday and every 70 minutes on Sunday, but not in evenings (except on Thursday and Friday).
• tram 82, which runs every 15 minutes on Saturday until about 7pm then every 20-30 minutes until 11:30pm, and every 15 minutes on Sunday until about 7pm then every 30 minutes until 8:30pm.

But say I wanted to get a bus from Sunshine instead. I'd have a choice of a single bus route, the 408, which runs every 30 minutes until about 6pm on Saturday and not on Sunday. Not really the best service span, but the frequency is reasonable when it does run.

I've often wondered whether Highpoint could justify having a train line running to it. Considering its principal activity centre status under Melbourne 2030, and the amount of traffic the centre gets (which is in the tens of millions every year) and the patronage of the route 82 tram between Footscray and Highpoint, it could probably work. I think that the best option would be to extend the Flemington Racecourse line, which could then also serve Victoria University's largest campus, which is only 800 metres away from Flemington Racecourse, and would also introduce a full-time service to the Showgrounds.

Having a train station at (or under) Highpoint would definitely be a good long-term option, especially if the retail group and/or council and/or government want to increase public transport usage to the centre. In the mean time, weekend service frequencies on tram route 82 should be upgraded to every 10 minutes during the day and every 15 minutes in the evening, so every train departing Footscray on the weekend is met by a tram. I know I for one would definitely use trams more often, and I imagine a large number of others would, especially considering much of the centre's traffic comes from the western suburbs.

Introduction

Now, the compulsory introduction.

My name's Matt, and I'm 17 years old but not for that much longer. I'll be 18 in December. I'm located in the western suburbs of Melbourne. I live in a 1980s-90s subdivision of a (fairly) major suburb, St Albans, that has three reasonably well patronised bus routes (422, 424 and 425, which all run roughly every 40 minutes Monday to Friday, every hour on Saturday and not at all on Sunday or during the evening) servicing it (although, route 422 is less frequent in peak than off-peak due to increased running times to the terminus and back). I live closer to route 422 than the other two. I like trains, trams and buses if you didn't already know.

I'm studying Civil Engineering at Victoria University, in Footscray. My four-day-a-week commute involves taking a bus, a train, then another bus. I've had my learner's permit for over a year, but I hardly ever drive. I end up taking public transport almost every time I go somewhere. That'll be the main focus of what will eventually be here - my public transport adventures, most of which will occur on Saturdays.

I've been to/through every train station in the Metcard area, except Flemington Racecourse. I've gotten off a train at every single premium station in Melbourne, and almost every host station. I've been almost everywhere by tram too, except route 5 past Glenferrie/Wattletree Rds and route 57 past Maribyrnong/Rosamond Rds. I've been on a whole pile of bus routes that I couldn't possibly list all of off the top of my head.

I like to collect train/tram/bus timetables. I'll probably do a lot of ranting about them here. Probably what changes should be made to them, in particular.

So yeah, that's the introduction. Hopefully I can update this regularly, which shouldn't be too hard considering the amount of suburban travelling I do.