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'cos you changed all those little back street “to the houses” routes to Mega Routes fucking fifteen minutes walk from where anyone lived and cut the goddamn services, you chodes.
When I was a kid you could literally catch a bus that looped from chaddy to oakleigh to chaddy to oakleigh that touched on both stations, both shopping centres, went past st. mary mags, along the batesford shops, and was within easy goddamn distance to every house on the way. Every half hour on the loop, meaning one up and one down every 15 minutes. Now you bypass everything to stuff them on express routes so no one can get on the farkin’ things and they run once every four hours.
I’ve been fairly lucky everywhere I’ve lived in melbourne. Where I am in the inner NW we have 2 bus stops about a 1 minute walk away and the bus comes right past my house. That runs from 6am to 9pm on a 10-30 minute frequency. Otherwise there’s also a smartbus stop a 10 minute walk away that runs every 10-20 minutes from 5am until midnight.
My last area had a bus stop a 5 min walk away that ran every 30-50 minutes from 7am until 8pm. I did live in Albanvale for a while in 2019 and we didn’t have a usable bus there. Nearest bus stop was about a 25 minute walk away so I never used it.
That used to be pretty standard (well they tended to stop around 7pm, depending on the operator), there was a point in the 90’s where you basically knew if you had an original green and white grenada or original ventura line you were absolutely sweet on the timetable but any modernish bus with orange on the branding meant you were fucked.
Melbourne could learn a thing or two about public transit from Perth. At this rate it’s gonna lose its title as the best city for transit real soon.
Yeah, you’re not wrong. I’ll be honest though, I’m not sure we even have the title for best PT though. I haven’t been to Brissy or Perth yet, but between us, Adelaide, and Sydney, I’d say that Sydney is ahead of us. The only area Sydney is lacking in is their buses, or at least bus stops. Their bus stops don’t contain very many amenities and have very little information (in rural areas, the bus stops are literally just a giant B on a pole).
Adelaide’s transport is pretty bad, half their suburban lines still aren’t electrified, none of their bus stops have any information at all, their bus network, although decent frequency wise, is a complicated mess of letters and numbers with no clear meaning and sometimes dozens of minor variants per route. Their trams and O-Bahn are good though, as they both have dedicated tracks/lanes and don’t share much with road vehicles.
Melbourne I’d say does have a more refined system and we’re pretty good at providing information. Trains run all night on weekends (even if it is to an abysmal frequency), which neither Adelaide or Sydney do (although Sydney does run limited buses along their Tx lines at night every night of the week). Our tram network is extensive, although primarily serves more well of areas pretty much only in the east, and only has a few small sections of dedicated or protected track, so delays from car crashes and roadworks commonly cause delays. Our train network and certain bus routes have good frequencies during peak, although we’ve been having lots of issues with trespassers on tracks in the inner city, which results in all lines being delayed for up to 2 or 3 hours - with delays of up to 1 hour happening during peak on most days).
I’m loving all the transport related news.im seeing from Perth, and Perth seems to be the only city that’s actively extending their train lines. Melbourne is building the metro tunnel which is a small tunnel that will run under the CBD, but that’s only connecting 2 train lines together, and only really serves areas that are already served by trams. Sydney is building their metro lines, which although really substantial and definitely game changing, is just 1 line (although it has been split into I think 3 or 4 stages and has its own development plan for more lines in the future). Whereas Perth had opened a few new lines and extensions over the last few years, and seems to serve its outer suburbs (at least north and south) better than we do in Melbourne and certain areas of west Sydney.
