Welcome To Melbourne Keilos & MTR

Good riddance Connex. Yarra Trams, I had nothing against you. I know that running a train system is hard and that we don’t know how the new company will handle our system and that their good repuation is with a much smaller system but it will just be good to see some new colours and signage. The Connex branding in Melbourne has a bad association with delays, problems, bullies and the like. Time for a fresh start.

P.s. Get rid of Kosky

Connex Screwed You

Melburnians, you’ve been screwed over significantly by Connex in the past with our failing trains and it’s crumbling infastructure and today it’s been revealed that people may be selling cheap Resold Metcards.

Want to save some cash for a system that has been failing and ripping you all of. Then…

********BUY RESOLD METCARDS********

“A Metlink spokeswoman said commuters should only buy tickets from approved outlets, ticket machines or at stations.”

…She would wouldn’t she. Being a spokeswoman……for connex.

It’s Only A Scam If You’re Scammed

It has been dubbed a Metcard “Scam” but how are YOU being scammed if you buy a ticket and save some money in the process.

The spokeswoman goes on to say

“Not only is it illegal to resell Metcards, you cannot guarantee that they will work, so always buy them from approved channels,”

Have your Metcard reseller put the ticket through the validating machine and THEN purchase it. Then you’ll know it works

SIMPLE!        Have A Nice Day

They’ve left it until everyone has gone home (well not home, because they’re probably still at the station), but it’s been announced that all travel on trams, trains and buses in Melbourne will be free to travel on tomorrow. The connex site at the time of writing this does not have an announcement. It’s mentioned in this age article briefly (NO HEADLINE).

They say that barriers will be open but this will not stop people from buying tickets and people who accidently buy tickets will not be compensated. So the situation I imagine for tomorrow will be that a very high percentage of people tomorrow morning will still buy tickets and only become aware of this free travel when they arrive at work.

Spread the word!! Free tickets tomorrow (or today if you’re reading this and it’s Friday)

Original Age story here

“On Tuesday Ms Kosky conceded that decades of underinvestment in the system had left it vulnerable to failure. She has been responsible for the public transport system since December 2006.”

What has Kosky been doing?

So now that Kosky is going on her third year as transport minister, was she just continuing to ride this so called wave of of underinvestment? At what point was she planning to look at the state of the tracks to forecast this problem and take steps to fix it?

Why do the trains we have purchased in the last few years have airconditioning that only works up to 35 degrees?

What is the sense of having air conditioning that won’t work when it’s needed most, rendering the trains completely unusable. Back in the days when I did catch the trains, at least in the old trains everyone could open up all the windows and at least have a massive rush of air in the carriages and they were still getting people home.

Yep. Their trains don’t work and neither does their website.  The small amount of information they have tells us what I guess we already knew. Cancelled, cancelled, cancelled. No chance of an ice-cream this time though, that was a once off remember. This isn’t a charity.

Fellow Melbourne people who take trains, I sympathise for you and exhibit some anger (since i still pay for tram tickets now and then) as the temperature rises to 43 degrees and Connex announces at LEAST 50 train cancellations.

Anyway, it’s all here  along with a news video from this morning including snippets of morning commuters with loser comments like

“It’s pretty good, the trains are air-conditioned, it was on time, and was fine”

“last night it was about 5 minutes, but, only about 5 minutes late, so, which is not too bad, but often in the hot weather you gotta expect them to be late, yeah, so, you get used to it after a while…[laughs]”

Well done you idiots, encouraging below standard (mediocrity at best) services.

Original story here

Bomb Connex

Everyone wants to do it, they want to bomb Connex and interrogate members of the company at top level before deciding on painful (but fair) tortuous punishments. But you can’t do that, you would go to jail. So let’s bomb a ticket machine instead.

Someone did what everyone else wants to do, they destroyed a small piece of Connex capital. We pay good ticket prices for services that don’t run, we have to get our moneys worth in other ways.  Unfortunately, the general public catching trains were inconvenienced once again in this show of frustration and at the end of the day, we’re paying for the machine. Plus, high level connex executives escape that tortuous punishment we all dream about.

Connex Conspiracy?

Was this vandalism? Or apart of Connex’s ingenius plan? 

• Perhaps the ticket machine was a  convenient scape goat and the trains were just simply cancelled due to Connex incompetence
• Or maybe it’s not a convenient co-incidence.
• Maybe Connex put the bomb in the ticket machine themselves?
• They’ve exhausted every other excuse under the sun. Train tracks expanding. Public transport minister this, public transport minister that…(I’m by no means defending the public transport minister, I do think we should just scrap them and start from scratch).
• Maybe connex lit those fires next to the tracks themselves.

What a fresh new approach to justifying a crumbling transport system by framing the people who pay for it.

We’ve had a pretty weak Summer thus far until yesterday when we finally received some scorching weather, one of our first hot ones. As soon as this happens our trains fail and people are left stranded in hot hot conditions.

Connex Continues To Fail You

Melbourne’s public transport, particularly our trains, are continually making commuters pay and suffer, it’s embarressing. I can walk to work so taking the train is never an issue for me, but I wonder how everyone else tolerates it constantly and just gets angry on the inside without collectively doing anything.

Melbourne People Let It Happen

My work collegue said to me this morning, if this was in France, people would be rioting and burning things. Not that this is a better situation, but I think it would be great if there was more passion and strength in our local community that wouldn’t allow the themselves to be continually stomped on.

Happens To Everyone?

“A Connex spokeswoman said the situation was inevitable in the middle of summer in Melbourne. “The same sorts of issues are experienced in countries all over the world that run trains in hot weather,” she said.”

Any of these other countries first or second world?

Orignal Article

On Oaks day it would appear that revellers would have been better off if they’d turned up on horseback themselves. Thousands were left stranded when the flemington racecourse train line along with 2 others were out of action. People were even walking on the train lines to get away from what would have been a fairly frustrating situation. But this is not the part that suprised me. My work collegue and I are reading the article and we come across how Connex plans to NOT compensate affected passengers.

Compensation For Affected Passengers

“Connex said it would not offer compensation for commuters, instead it would make a sizeable donation to a charity which is yet to be decided.

Mr Metcalfe said it was “very difficult to address the compensation because (people) get to the racecourse in different ways”.”

• Isn’t the cost transport included in oaks day tickets?
• Maybe anyone with an Oaks day ticket could be reimbersed. 
• Connex has had to reimburse tickets to passengers before such as early 2007. But this was not out of goodwill as they try to give the impression, but because less then 98% of schedules services ran, breaking their compensation threshold. See here.
• People holding tickets for that period may not have been effected by the peak hour debacles then, but could still received compensation if they could be bothered
• The least Connex could do  now is provide some plan that would more directly benefit some of those that were inconvenienced, had their Oaks day ruined and had to fork out more money to get home.

Connex Take Advantage Of Charities

Everyone loves a good charity and money that is going to them is always a good thing. But when a rich global company like Connex uses them as a money and face saving buffer it is nothing short of shameful!

This will be my first post of many public transport related woes because taking public transport in Melbourne is just fucked. It’s not the actual service that upsets me either (though we do have a pretty crappy train and bus system), it’s my fellow asshole commuters.

The mindless, illogical behaviour I see from tram and train assholes just sends me into a raging rant sometimes. I thank god that I now live close to the city and have become a city cycler because having it in for repairs has reminded me just how brain numbing and stupid public transport commuters are.

Blocking the doors

Problem
Seems there has always been a subconscious fear of terrorism. People refuse to lose their position from near doorways, ideal for those emergency exits. Passengers have no space to board the vehicle, but they do anyway, a crush ensues, tram drivers often refusing to continue.

Solution
If your stop is not the next stop, don’t be afraid to take a position further towards the back or middle of the tram. There is plenty of time for you to get closer to the doors between 2 stops with the worst scenario involving some excuse mees and squeezing. Passengers will be more evenly distributed and the service more efficient. And for Christ sakes, get out of the doorway.