Goodness. I often compare Melbourne’s public transport system to that of other cities. I’ve seen Taipei’s Mass Rapid Transport, the London Tube and Paris’s brilliant Metro system. “Come on, Melbourne,” I’d complain. “Lift your game! We need some real leadership on public transport here.”
This is a first, though: a resident of another city wants to follow Melbourne’s lead! Ian from Toronto writes about ‘How the TTC could learn some lessons from Down Under‘.
Go, the trams!
Trams are good, but other than that I think the Melbourne public transport system is quite bad! Sydney is much better with their trains, and QLD has a great bus system (well the Sunshine Coast did any way). I find it so hard to survive without a car in Melbourne. Oh but I like the zone system we have, it’s a real money saver. In Japan we have to pay from one station to another, and its so expensive! I’m just glad my company pays… Japan has a great public transport system with both the trains and buses,, but what I dont understand is that the last train finishes so early around 12.30, and its PACKED OUT even on weekdays! There’s a demand for later trains, I dont know why they dont make ’em. It’s either people run for the last train, or they stay out all night until the first train to get home.
ughhh melbourne transport system still sucks. =PP
The article failed to point out that they’re only just rolling out those systems for tram stops in the CBD. I have yet to see times indicating when the next trams are at stops outside the CBD, and there’s definitely none for buses and probably won’t be for years and years. I remember they were trialling a system for buses along certain bus lines but that has now been discontinued and all that money spent to trial it is down the drain…
Trains go choo choo…
This guy obviously never actually tried to go anywhere much further out than the CBD. Interesting too that the article is about the Toronto public transport system.
I’ve actually done a bit of research into the whole issue of why our public transport is as bad as it is and one of the things that I came up with was that Toronto would be a good place to try and emulate. Melbourne, you see, simply doesn’t have the population density to sustain a public transport system like London or Paris. The problems really boil down to two things (1) different provider companies don’t work together so things don’t time well and (2) the infrastructure was put together in a hurry and without much thought which is why the trains all fan out from the CBD, which is not very efficient.
There are, of course, other issues such as the abysmal disaster that privatisation has been, but that’s a whole other issue. Privatisation needn’t be bad, but it can be much better done.
I guess I’m spoilt though, growing up in Hong Kong and all…