Melbourne’s trains in ‘the good old days’?

Welcome to Melbourne’s railway network. Do you sometimes think that your trip home used to be better in ‘the good old days’? That pushing your way through crowded platforms is something new?

Packed platforms at Parliament station in the City Loop

It’s been that way for decades, as this 1960 photo of Flinders Street Station from the Herald and Weekly Times collection shows.

Crowded railway platform at Flinders Street Station, 1960

How about electrical faults bringing the network to a halt in the middle of peak hour? (The Age, 7 November 2008)

Oaks Day train failures, 2008

That isn’t new either – including the passengers escaping stranded trains by walking along the tracks. (The Argus 12 March 1954):

Trains stranded due to blackout. The Argus, 12 March 1954

And the old chestnut of level crossings delaying motorists? (The Age 29 December 2011)

Melbourne level crossings, 2011

People have been complaining about that one for years as well. (The Argus 30 March 1950)

Melbourne level crossings, 1950

So who knows what the next 50 years will bring to Melbourne’s railway network?

Three generations of Melbourne ticketing

The core of Melbourne’s railway network is the City Loop, circling the Hoddle Grid and serving three underground stations. Having opened to passengers in 1981, during the past 30 years of operation three different methods of ticket checking have been used to ensure passengers have paid their way.

Manual checking of tickets dates back to the start of railways, and in the City Loop things were no different. With staff required to sit by the station exit and eyeball the ticket of each passenger who walked past, this photograph from the Weston Langford collection shows the facilities on the northern concourse of Parliament Station in 1985, where passengers were funnelled past a half dozen ticket checking booths.

Parliament North Concourse in 1985 (Weston Langford collection)

With the reliance on the Mark I Eyeball, staff were expected to read the fare type and expiry date of each ticket in the seconds it took a passenger to walk past, presumably leaving these manual checks easy to circumvent by those wanting to scam a free ride. The system was also labour intensive at the front end, with passengers needing to line up at the ticket window each morning, asking for their “return to Richmond” or “weekly to the city” tickets, issued on a small piece of date stamped cardboard.

The next advance in public transport ticketing was the magnetic stripe card, where tickets are issued by coin operated vending machines, and checked by automated barriers at the entrance and exit of stations. The London Underground experimented with magnetic stripe ticketing as far back as 1964, and by the 1970s the majority of new metro networks around the world were equipped with similar systems.

Back in Melbourne we were a laggard on the automated ticketing front, with it taking until the mid-1990s introduction of Metcard to give local transport operators a less labour intensive method of collecting fares. The contract for Metcard was signed with ERG Group in 1994, with equipment rolled out between 1996 and 1998, and full revenue operation commencing in May 1998. As for the remaining paper tickets, these hung around for a few more years, the last ones being withdrawn from sale at the start of 2002.

Here we see the Metcard barriers at Flagstaff Station during a lull in passengers in morning peak, with passengers required to insert their tickets into the barriers on entry to the station, as well as on exit.

Metcard barriers at Flagstaff Station, with the new LCD next train displays behind

We now reach the current state of the art in ticketing – the contactless smartcard. Pioneered by Hong Kong’s Octopus card system that was launched in 1997, the 2000s saw an explosion in the number of similar systems being installed around the world. The main advantage of the new technology is that they work through wallets and bags, speeding up the ticket checking process by eliminating the need for tickets to be inserted into barriers or validators.

Melbourne made a start on our smartcard system in 2005 when the Kamco consortium won the contract to develop what became known as the Myki system. Covering both metropolitan Melbourne and country Victoria, work started on the rollout in 2007, with limited public operations starting in 2008. It took until December 2009 for the commencement of Myki operation on suburban trains, with the rollout to the rest of the metropolitan area following six months later, with the end of Metcard sales coming in December 2012.

The third generation of ticket checking in the City Loop is the dedicated Myki barriers that have so far only appeared at a limited number of locations: this example is at Melbourne Central at the Swanston Street end:

Myki barriers at Melbourne Central seeing light use in morning peak

The big advantage of these new gates over the previous Metcard barriers is the location of the Myki reader: located on the top of the barrier for maximum convenience, the card reader also has the same screen as seen on every other piece of equipment, allowing passengers to see their balance when touching on or off.

As for the existing Metcard barriers and their slow Myki scanners, there is a reason they are nicknamed “frankbarriers”: they are just an interim step in the rollout, and will be eventually replaced by the proper Myki barriers.

Further reading

2011 RACV Board election results

Following up from my RACV board election post from back in October 2011, here are the results! Turns out they were released a few months ago, seems even I didn’t notice…

From the RACV corporate website:

In accordance with By-Law 6.7 of the Election By-Laws of Royal Automobile Club of Victoria (RACV) Ltd, the Returning Officer has declared that the following persons have been elected (in order the candidates were elected):

By Ordinary (Club) and Service Members

Ms S Sheed

Mr J M S Slattery

This result was confirmed by resolution at the Annual General Meeting held on Tuesday 15 November 2011.

As a refresher, the candidates were:

  • Suzanna Sheed is a lawyer from Shepparton, an incumbent RACV board member since 2003, and a RACV Club member (8 years) and RACV Service member (35 years).
  • Thomas Houlihan is a farm owner and property manager from near Horsham, and a RACV Service member (23 years).
  • Marcus Wigan is a transport academic from Melbourne, and doesn’t appear to be a RACV member.
  • John Slattery is a farm owner and company director from Geelong, an incumbent RACV board member since 2011, and a RACV Club and Service member.
  • John Bailey runs a real estate agency in Wangaratta, and is a RACV Club member and a RACV Service member (26 years).
  • Fred Tonelli is an architect and sessional lecture from Melbourne, and a RACV Service member.

So as you can see, the two incumbents have been returned for another year. I wonder what 2012 will hold?

Ballot paper for the 2011 RACV Board election

Melbourne’s abandoned skyscraper

If you frequent the west end of Melbourne’s CBD, then you might have noticed this nondescript looking office building during your travels. Known as Communications House, this 21-storey building is located at 199 William Street on the north-west corner of the intersection with Little Bourke Street, opposite the Supreme Court of Victoria.

The abandoned skyscraper on Melbourne's William Street

Most people walk right past the building without a second thought, but if you stop and look through the windows, one finds an abandoned foyer covered with years of dust. So how does an entire skyscraper lie empty for over a decade?

Abandoned foyer of Communications House

Communications House was constructed in 1966 for the Postmaster-General’s Department (PMG), it originally consisted of a single office tower, with curtain walls on three sides, a red brick elevator core on the western face of the building, and a neighbouring building butting up against it from the north. This Wolfgang Sievers photograph shows the William Street frontage of the building soon after completion.

While this photograph from the same set shows the south-west facade, including the elevator core.

At an unknown date a second tower of the same external design was constructed on a site to the west of the first one, with the two towers linked at all levels by a brick skybridge crossing Guests Lane.

Ewwwww! Communications House on William Street

With the split of the Postmaster-General’s Department into separate postal and telecommunications departments in 1975, Communications House became the property of the Australian Telecommunications Commission, better known as Telecom Australia, and later Telstra. The telco remained the main tenant of the building until their departure in 1994, having moved to their new 47-storey high office complex on Exhibition and Lonsdale Streets.

Singaporean billionaire Tay Tee Peng purchased the building soon after for $12 million, and then spent $10 million refurbishing it, but with little success in attracting tenants. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s Communications House lay empty, with the next owner being an Asia based investor with the registered company name Memo Corporation, who purchased it at an unknown date.

Of the refurbishment work carried out, tthe most obvious work was the glass foyer facing William Street, which differs to the sparse plaza seen earlier in the 1960s photographs. As for the rest of the work, it did not appear very successful, with work being left half completed.

Abandoned foyer and site office

Down on the ground floor of the Little Bourke Street tower a tea room was established, only to lie abandoned for a number of years.

Abandoned tea room for construction workers

Next door to that was a site office, featuring a desk with a crappy old IBM computer, and what looks to be a 2001 calendar on the far wall. I hope they haven’t left their lights on for 10 years.

Abandoned site office at a construction site

It took until January 2011 for something to finally happen on the site, when it was sold for $45 million to Hengyi Australia, a local subsidiary of a Chinese property developer. Using existing plans developed by Bruce Henderson Architects, the developer plans to convert the building into more than 530 home offices, each between 40 and 70 square metres in size, some with balconies.

With the development known as “The William”, in September 2011 work started the construction of a display suite and sales office inside the William Street foyer, with the rest of the empty lobbing being covered with full height red curtains.

Morning commuters on the way to the office

Painting the ugly looking stone pillars

"The William" on William Street, Melbourne

This is what the developers intend the lobby to look like….

Lobby of "The William"

And as for the outside:

External render of "The William" development

The architecture geeks are rather happy with the transformation – Communications House is considered one of the ugliest buildings in the Melbourne CBD, so even a refurbishment is something to cheer for.

Further reading

Public transport is 1337

Spotted in Melbourne – Metro Trains carriage 1337T:

XTrapolis trailer car 1337T

And over in Adelaide – bus 1337:

Torrens Transit bus #1337

Don’t get the joke?