This title is not a complete gender reversal. If Mrs Beeton had been a guy, his wife wouldn’t even have been mentioned in the title

The new footbridge at Champion rd Newport is open

The departure board at Southern Cross has changed. It used to be ordered by departure time. Now it’s by line group. More useful for passengers.

LOL

VicPol is now (re)defining the purpose of the PSOs as fighting crime. This supports their case to focus them where there is more 'crime'.

But will passengers feel unsafe again on trains and stations?

And if something happened on a train, authority was always available at the next station. (Remember the Ormond riot that gave an impetus for the PSOs?)

The purpose of the PSOs was to reassure passengers, not directly to fight crime. That's why all stations received them (and the Ballieu boxes)...

'Needed' is doing heavy lifting here - it's disguising a change in mission.

My memory is that Ballieu placed PSOs at all stations because people didn't feel safe travelling at night. A PSO at every station meant that waiting for a train felt safe, or walking to your car in the car park...

Another interesting reflection on free PT - The Age is talking about the effect on dining out. It includes a section on good dining that you can get to by train (for free). Includes the walking distance from the station...

Of course, you continue to do this after the free travel expires.

Pushing the maximum production through.

This is not necessarily to say that the operators cut corners, but it's a very old plant and the production rate and age would increase the likelihood of something going wrong.

I would be quite surprised if the fire and the fuel shortage were unrelated.

(And, for the avoidance of doubt, sabotage hasn't crossed my mind.)

From a methodological perspective:

Why the hell would you do the survey after only a week of free travel? It takes time for potential users to become aware of the opportunity and to work out how to exploit it.

(Anecdotally, the trains got busier after the first week)

First shop returns to Campbell arcade (DeGraves St subway)

I don't think there is any mechanism to force MPs to attend parliament? Traditionally it wouldn't have been thought necessary.

And of course you can think of elected MPs that never attended parliament - for a long time it was Sinn Féin policy to get elected but not attend Westminster

Ahh, either I misread the article (or it's been amended since I read it). I read the article as saying that the cap for all concessions was $25 and the daily cap for pensioners was $2.50

Yes, but with a full fare, the only penalty for using the wrong credit card/phone is that the fare is not counted towards the cap.

If you're a concession holder, using the wrong card/phone means that you'll pay full fare.

I find it interesting that this is appears to be a smoking compartment, but the LNER public relations have chosen not to have anyone with gaspers. Particularly the women.

The other interesting question is can you enroll multiple credit cards or credit cards and your phone? Otherwise you'd better make sure you are using the same device or card *all the time*.

It's not clear how using your credit card or phone instead of an Opal card will make it easier to hit the weekly or daily limits.

And if there is a daily cap of $2.50 for pensioners, is it any surprise that they are failing to reach the weekly cap of $25?

Yep; such a cool design

Am I the only person to remember 'Space 1999'?

(Yes, technically not a movie, but a lot more about the moon than some of these contenders.)

Yeah, but you opened my eyes to the different messaging from the government about fuel use. Lots to the general public (see below for today's instalment). Nothing to companies about thinking about their fuel use and to consider alternatives to road transport.

Gauge conversion only bites when you want to send between a broad gauge area and interstate (especially other capitals). Unfortunately there's very little evidence that there is much traffic in that category, and certainly not enough to justify much capital expenditure...

Traffic from Port of Melbourne to inland factories is not "in sight"; it's hypothetical. They are currently struggling to get a container park off the ground at Ballarat for this reason.

In any case, one end is still Port of Melbourne and the gauge is irrelevant...

Indeed. If governments can encourage use of public transport to save fuel, why doesn't government encourage use of container services between major cities?

The whole mess is made worse b/c the only freight traffic in sight is farm to port (pretty much as it always ever has been). Gauge consistency really doesn't add much value, and certainly can't pay for substantial gauge conversion works.

There's a good reason why SA ended up with a set of standard gauge interstate lines, broad gauge metro, and intrastate freight and passenger disappeared.

Think about converting Toolamba - Deni. Problem is that the freight traffic would now have to bear all the cost of Toolamba - Echuca & the freight charges would be uneconomic. (Costs Bendigo - Echuca are shared with the passenger service.)...

This means connected rural freight/pass (Warrnambool, Piangil, Bairnsdale) can't be converted because of the inner passenger services (Geelong, Bendigo).

Just about everything you look at is uneconomic...

Problem is that gauge conversion of the metro lines gives zero benefit to metro traffic so will never be economic. This makes conversion of the connecting regional rail uneconomic - you can't segregate economically in inner Melbourne and capacity demands in the west will mean tighter integration...

I notice they don't mention the teensy problem of the broad gauge passenger rail service Ballarat - Maryborough.