Thanks for the offer, always available to have a chat about the issues. I’m out of the country for the next two weeks, but I’ll drop you an email when I get back to discuss it further.

cheers,
Phin

Sorry I can’t reply in detail to the issues raised - but I have to be at the airport in an hour and haven’t finished packing !!!

So, just quickly - agree Riccardo, I’d love to see some nice evocative names for Melbourne lines and I think London does it the best of anywhere I’ve seen, with great names like District, Bakerloo etc.

Peter - very insightful remarks re. the development of integrated ticketing vs integrated service planning in Melbourne. Also thanks for uploading the images to your blog.

Ben, agree the current tram map was a step backwards. Also, I remember those connex maps - just insane!!!

cheers,
Phin

In Melbourne I think the earlier tram maps got it right, each route was colour coded depending on which CBD street it travelled down, and the two cross suburban routes were shown in a contrasting colour to surrounding routes. To me this made sense (even as a 6 year old reading the Melway in the back of the car).

Even the post privatisation tram maps were generally good, with all CBD east-west routes one colour for one company and all CBD north-south routes another colour for the other company. Now it’s a yellow mess with a bit of blue around the edges

With regard to multi modal maps, I can recall that in the 90s that trains carried CBD maps that depicted the CBD grid with major landmarks, and all tram and bus (I think) routes within, as well as the city loop overlaid on top. With the split up and privatisation that level of information is no longer generally available except in tourist maps and obscure things like city saver leaflets.

In my opinion the dumbest thing ever was the Connex map that omited the rest of the suburban train network. Well done, never mind people who were travelling anywhere other than Glen Waverley to the City. I thought the way that the M>Train map handled zone information was interesting too. The lines themselves were colour coded (all connex lines were the same colour), but the shade got “heavier” moving inwards depending on the zone. I thought this was confusing and ended up using too many similar colours. The legend had to show all the lines plus each zone iteration, which was if anything a waste of space and too much information to decipher quickly. If only they had gone for the background zone shading instead.

I have been reading your site and am interested in you thoughts on developing a plan for a massive shift to electrified rail (tram and train) 2000km extra track.

I work for Climate Positive and my boss (i am his climate adviser) has been invited with myself by the roads and ports minister to present on things like cargo trams ..I would like to involve someone like you in my planning etc if you are available.

Let me know if you are interested

Keep up the good work.

Matthew Wright
0421 616 733
beyondzeroemissions.org
climatepositive.org

Also despite my earlier promise not to, I’m about to spin off into a rant that gets away from mapping as such, but may explain some of the biases we still see in them today.

Your post reminded me of a particular characteristic of public transport information here; we give much more weight to the ‘fares’ aspect than the ’service’ aspect. For example our ‘Fares & Travel Guide’ covers ‘fares’ more than ‘travel’, there is relatively light detail given to service standards (spans are covered but not rough frequencies and buses are hardly mentioned).

My guess is that this is due to traditions regarding who does what. Victoria has had strong and more active management of fares policy since at least the early 1980s through to the present day.

Matters such as such as service planning and passenger information played second fiddle for a long time. The break-up of the Met and franchising only increased this disparity as fares remained largely intact (apart from silly single-operator ticketing experiments) and strengthened in relative terms.

Metlink was a step to more strongly managed passenger information after the failure of fragmentation. And the bus reviews represent the most serious attempt at nework planning for years.

So hopefully this way of thinking will cause passenger information (eg maps) to be presented in a more balanced format. It should both help customers plan the trip they want to make today while open their mind to trips that they could make tomorrow (not before thought possible).

Unlike Adelaide and its Go Zones, we haven’t yet fully exploited the marketing benefits of good passenger info and I think this has great potential.

Riccardo: They are starting to ‘get it’ in relation to harmonised service frequencies, hours, directness and service standards, at least in theory. I too am gratified - this has been something hammered almost to the point of obsession in various bus submissions. Practice so far varies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RER_A

Interesting that because there is an insistance on same-seat journeys, therefore the branches only get 20 minute service in off-peak. Also of interest is that at peak time there is 2 minute frequency on the trunk (therefore 6 minute frequency on the branches?)

The branch with 10 minute off-peak frequency might be regarded as turn-up-and-go at a pinch - thoughts?

Just got me thinking about Belgrave/Lilydale and Sunbury/Melton