Melbourne’s latest Transport Disaster – a Tram Jam. 3 Transport Modes severely impeded. People walking (again). The City clogged again in 2 directions. Fix!

COMMENT, Melbourne — Yesterday, April 2nd 2008, the Eddington plan for Melbourne & Victoria was released. Like many before it, he calls for more freeways and roads and more money.
$18 Billion Australian dollars, (about USD $16 billion) before the inevitable incompetence, corruption and budget overruns at the implementation stage.

And like so many large projects, political jockeying may lead to a White Elephant. Yet we do have a choice…
Eddington ran airline BA, and is a respected business figure, but perhaps the questions he was asked do not reflect the questions he …

ANALYSIS, Germany — Train travel, after an unfashionable period in the 1970s-80s, is emerging again as an environmentally-friendlier, and practical way to travel to and from work.
Well, this is true, in Germany, and much of Europe.

The ease of implementation of the Deutsche Bahn (D-Bahn) system, allows for the enquiry into, and booking of complex train routes.
Whilst no mechanical system is perfect, those with some human knowledge of conditions on the ground in Germany, can plan and map routes across Europe using the German website for D-Bahn.
German Trains Worldwide Benchmark
In public …

COMMENT, Melbourne — Let’s face it privatized public transport has failed.
It’s not the same elsewhere in the world — where Public Transport is clean, reliable and safe.

Public transport succeeds in similar towns in Germany.
But not in Australia. Public transport can work, but does not now work in Melbourne & Victoria. There are issues in the approach of the State Government, private contractors and the various ideologically-driven desperadoes on this issue.
The biggest issue is the ideological gunfight set-up by far-Right gunslingers like Alan Moran, of the disingenuously-titled ‘Institute for Public Affairs’.
And …

ANALYSIS, Global — In many Western countries, as well as elsewhere in the world speeding has become popular.
It gets dangerous when aggressive drivers speed in suburban streets where young children play. It is playing dice with school-children’s lives.
And I have lost count of how many times I have almost been run over in the city. Especially by aggressive taxi drivers.
My aging mother has also been almost hit by 4 wheel drives 3 times in a 6 week period last year crossing at a zebra crossing.
In Melbourne, Australia, aggressive driving is …

COMMENT, Melbourne – Yet another Yarra Tram crash today. 4 people injured.
At the same time, on 3 occasions today I have seen ticket inspectors, and been asked for my ticket.
What may I ask are we paying for?
Unsafe, unclean and unreliable transport.
The woman behind me had the same idea. She told the ticket police, why did we have to have tickets, given the trams weren’t running this morning again?
Melbourne’s citizens are getting increasingly hostile to the transport inspectors, and the failling of another tram.
We the citizens of Melbourne, need a …

COMMENT, Melbourne – 3 Breakdowns in 1 hour in a 2 kilometre stretch of the busiest tram route in Melbourne, St Kilda Road, as of 10.15 am today.
There was a recent crash on St Kilda Road on Monday, in the same spot 3 breakdowns occured in one hour today.
This is happening very frequently, almost EVERY day, so as a majority of people who catch a tram to work are or meetings, study or family are inconvenienced every day.
It is seriously impacting lives, and forcing people to drive even …

[ratings]COMMENT, Melbourne — Yet another traffic accident. See the Age here: here’s a tip: Drivers will be blamed again. Yet more proof the current state government do not have the ability to deliver decent public transport.
As Sylvester would say
“Thufferin’ Thuccotash ! we need a Bracks-yard Britz! to fix the Thystem!”

COMMENT, Melbourne – In Melbourne broadsheet paper The Age, today there was a neat reminiscence on ‘trains’ from staff writer, Peter Hanlon.
“WE’RE on our way home for Dad’s funeral, his grandson and I. It’s good that we’re going by train; Dad worked 35 years for the railways, back in the days when human beings sold tickets, and machines that accepted only correct change were a dream for the future.”
He goes onto say…
“Whoever wins the next tender to run the state’s public transport would do well to acknowledge that there …

ANALYSIS, Melbourne –I loved rail as a kid. That trip from the small town I lived in to the ‘big smoke’ always took a 5 hour bus and a train trip.
And there was something inspiring about the rattle of that train.
Nostalgia aside, railways now are once again are on their way to leading the innovation zeitgeist in transport.
Railways – Back-to-the-Future Innovation
In cold hard fiscal terms railways have a bright future with some caveats.
Most importantly, trains have a very long-term future mainly due to the fact that trains carry more passengers …

OPINION, Leeton, NSW — There was a knifing in Melbourne last weekend. There is a knife, drug and violence epidemic in the Australian cities. There are severe infrastructure problems in Sydney, and emerging infrastructure problems in Melbourne.
The answer however is simple, and something State Governments avoid.
The answer is to do something.
As most governments are rewarded when they do nothing, less criticism from public & media, then the incentive is to do nothing.
Or as one leading government figure stated when asked why he didn’t do something: we don’t make …

ANALYSIS — Innovation (a positive social change) is rare. Innovation is needed in environmental issues, not reliance on just scientific solutions.
This means, governments, business, people and their communities need to act. And to varying degrees each of them are.
The Big Innovation Guerrilla/Gorilla in the Room – Our Environment
Your beliefs on Climate Change don’t matter, nor mine. Our environment is the issue.
A reasonable person would agree beyond reasonable doubt that there is evidence of harm to human and animal life attributable to environmental damage.
That is the standard of proof in …

Sir Tim Berners Lee on the next big innovation beyond Web 2.0. That would be the semantic web. Or basically interchangeable data, data from your contact database, talks to data from a website allowing you to file someone you meet online in your contacts. Or an invoice in your accounting system is machine-readable as an invoice on the web.
In other words no more data conversion. This is what XML is all about, but that is one part of it.
If it wasn’t Berners Lee, i’d say perhaps that’s a B I …

People are worried about Greenhouse pollution. The polls say so. Yet look at the mid-morning traffic.
1 person per car, many gas guzzler SVU/4WD (the Australian term) or high-octane V8 sports cars.
Australia, has a car culture, people feel superior when they zoom past those faithful souls like me catching a tram to work. They feel superior – look at me in my car. … my flash new sports car or SUV. It shows how much money I owe… sorry have.
Dumb Math: No car …