A unique verb in Melbourne’s vernacular is “Connexed”. Just say the Queen was in town and you’d been invited to formal tea at her hotel but you’re running terribly late due to an inevitable combination of cancelled and late trains, you’d be able to apologise to a frustrated monarch with the line, “I’m sorry, your Maj, but I was Connexed.” You see, everyone understands how the train system (dis)functions in this city and they’re very understanding when you have been fucked over by the system’s private operator, Connex.

Now the Brumby Government, itself largely responsible for the dog’s breakfast that is the train system, has gone and ruined the entire city’s ability to efficiently and succinctly sum up its frustration with the trains by awarding the contract to a new operator.

The Government, reeling from a public backlash over the rail network’s failings, yesterday dumped the French-owned operator Connex and replaced it with a consortium backed by Hong Kong’s metro operator … But Premier John Brumby insisted commuters would get a better deal from new rail operator Metro Trains Melbourne …

What will it be now? Metro’d? Metro Trainsoed? How will we possible cope? Brumby says we will be compensated appropriately.

More staff on stations, fewer cancelled trains and improved punctuality have been promised by the Brumby Government and the new consortium appointed to operate Melbourne’s train network for the next eight years.

Just after they finish spending millions and millions on new station and train signage, new uniforms, new stationary, new audio recordings, and an advertising blitz to promote the brand to the pissed off and cynical Melbourne population who have see it all before each of the several other times the operator has changed.

So, I’m on the train home this evening and I’m sending a text message to someone and I look up across the aisle and there’s this old, shabby-looking guy sitting there with an extinguished half-smoked cigarette hanging out of his left nostril.

Andrew Bolt loves to cry about how teh evil Leftists are running this state into the ground.

Water:
MELBOURNE’s summer water storage levels have slumped to their lowest point in 25 years… Yarra Valley Water managing director Tony Kelly, said Victorians were now using an “unacceptable” amount of water…

Power:
TENS of thousands of houses sweltered through the night as sizzling heat caused power outages across the state…. “These extreme temperatures and excessive use of air conditioning can impact on the electricity distribution network,’’ Mr Batey said.

Transport:
MELBOURNE’S train system buckled under the strain of Wednesday’s heat, forcing maintenance workers to cool the rails with water… But commuters were left boiling mad after enduring more than 150 cancelled services in one of the system’s worst days in recent memory…

PUBLIC Transport Minister Lynne Kosky has blamed ”underinvestment over a long period of time” as a key factor in the poor performance of Melbourne’s public transport network in recent weeks.

But it’s not actually teh Leftists, it’s extreme weather events.

Water:
Melbourne has experienced below-average rainfall for the past decade.

Power:
Melbourne is sweltering through a once-in-a-century heatwave that is placing enormous demands on power supplies, with interruptions due to fuses blowing and not lack of supply.

Transport:
I’m no real fan of Connex, but when rails are physically buckling and breaking due to the extreme heat I do tend to understand that problems are largely out of their control.

Maybe the weather is leftist?

Apparently the Melbourne public transport system has an image problem.

ALMOST half of Victorians think the state’s public transport system is worse than five years ago.

The latest Age/Nielsen poll found that 49% of Victorians think public transport is worse, while 27% say it’s better.

Dissatisfaction with public transport appears to cross the political divide, with 48% of Labor voters and 54% of Liberal voters saying it is worse.

And of course public transport Minister Lynne Kosky is completely dodging the issue and further enhancing her image as a complete tool.

The report, released by the Department of Infrastructure this month, found 30,000 more people were working in the city centre in 2006 than in 2001. Despite this jump, almost 5000 fewer people drove to work.

And the number of people who walked to work in the city centre rose to more than 5%, up from less than 3% in 2001.

Ms Kosky said she was extremely pleased with the results. “People are voting with their feet,” she said.

Remember, this is the same Minister who has blamed train commuters for delays by taking too long to get in and out of carriages, blamed commuters for expecting that the train or tram will show up when the timetable says it will, and demanded that workplaces and schools change their behaviour to match the public transport service rather than the other way around.

Now, everyone has a couple of hundred public transport horror stories but here’s my most recent.

On Sunday McBec and I wanted to get from Brunswick to St Kilda to meet friends at the pub. We left home just after 2pm and didn’t expect the trip to take much longer than an hour. The Sydney Rd Street Festival was on so we thought we’d walk our way through and grab a tram at the end of Sydney Rd. However, we got there and found the tram service replaced by buses. After waiting 20 minutes for a bus we walked, frustrated, to Jewell train station to catch the 3.04pm service to the city.

Of course, Connex regretted that the 3.04pm to the city had been cancelled.

So we walked back to Sydney Rd and watched a bus go past just before we got to the stop. 20 minutes later we finally got on a ridiculously overcrowded bus to Elizabeth St in the city. It was 3:20pm. By the time we got to St Kilda it was just past 4pm — a travel time from Brunswick of two hours. We could’ve driven to Bendigo in the same amount of time.

We don’t own a car because we live in the inner city and there is public transport almost everywhere we need to go. But every single day I thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster that I don’t rely on public transport to get to work like so many other poor saps who either have no choice or try to do the right thing by leaving the car at home. I get homicidal when trains are cancelled when I’m trying to get to the pub, let alone get home after a ten hour day at work.

It’s time for Lynne Kosky and the Brumby government to wake up and provide a public transport system that meets the demands of the people of Melbourne and that justifies the overblown cost of a ticket to use it.

Billybob and I were sitting in the pub last night with my laptop and some free wireless internet looking up timetables for a train journey we were thinking of taking. Tuesday night is really party night in Ed and BB’s worlds. But we both had to laugh our arses off when the V/Line timetable search returned this result.

Sorry there has been a problem…

Regrettably our system has experienced a problem when looking up journeys to match your requirements.

Some possible causes and solutions:

1) The Plan Your Journey tool cannot currently plan journeys from one part of regional Victoria to another. We are currently working on a replacement system, to eliminate this issue.

V/Line: serving regional Victoria by failing to provide any real service information.

Why didn’t I think to invest in Hitachi trains?

From The Age:

In 2002, it decided to scrap and sell its ageing Hitachi train fleet. Mr Horne picked up half for the bargain price of $2600 per carriage. Last November he sold three carriages back to the State Government for $60,000, a profit of more than 700 per cent.

The closest I have ever come to a deal as dick-hardeningly good as that is when I traded the Split Enz single Late Last Night that I bought for $2 for an autographed CD.

Hitachi trains were first introduced in 1972, and were widely admired as they were the first train to be made entirely from stainless steel. I like to imagine that people in the 70’s used to watch the Hitachi speed past, shake their heads with a rueful chuckle, and dream of the future.

Now the Hitachi trains are, to put it lightly, total garbage. They shake, they rattle, they roll, and when some goober has opened a window you can’t hear anyone near you talk.

“WHAT?” you will shout in vain.

“I’m sleeping with your best friend!” she will cry, arms flailing.

“What?!” you scream, eyes popping from your forehead in a vain attempt to comprehend the muffled sounds eminating from her lips.

And so on.

Today, I was unfortunate enough to catch a Hitachi for the first time in ages from Camberwell. The interior of the train brought to mind a homosexual’s nightmare, as many-a gay man has woken from his slumber screaming after dreaming of fake wood panelling.

I mean, really!

Is stock from the early 70’s really what Melbourne should be using in the new millenium? For once, the blame can’t be levelled at Connex as they don’t own the trains – the government does.

Mr. Horne is really cleaning up:

That deal would be worth between $150,000 and $200,000 per train, including the $25,000 cost of trucking each carriage to Melbourne. But in another deal the Government got a bargain, securing another six-carriage set from rail enthusiast group Elecrail for $35,000.

Incidentally, I also visited the infamous Nobbies visitors centre this weekend. Two Bracks screw-ups in two days, aren’t I a lucky boy?

(Cross posted on the excellent Random Brainwave)