Handling multiple city stations
As some of you may know, I have just returned from a trip to the USA and England, and of course I spent a lot of time comparing transport options there with what we have here. I’m going to be talking at length about it at the Smart Passengers AGM (no date yet, watch our forums for details) but one thing in particular I feel needs a discussion post.
There were certain cities I found very convenient to get around, and others I found inconvenient. It took me several weeks to work out why: the cities I found inconvenient to get around were those with multiple city stations and an ineffective “glue” to hold them together. By “glue” I mean a simple, convenient way to get from one station to another to make a connection.
New York
New York is always quoted as an example of a Metro which runs at high frequency and long hours. I was looking forward to riding it, even though my travel plans only allowed time for a trip from Penn Station to JFK Airport. I was disappointed, partly because the staff were fairly unhelpful, but mainly because it was a case of “Take the Long Island Railroad to Jamaica station, then transfer to the Airtrain from there”.
There’s a problem right away – why are there three separate companies (Subway, Long Island, Airtrain), each with their own separate ticketing system and with no coordination?
The rule slowly started to gel in my head. Ideally there should be only one city station, served by all trains into the city. It’s an extension of the rule that says there should be “Fewer, larger transport interchanges, preferably at major activity centres”.
Thankfully, there was plenty of time before the flight and I was able to enjoy the Airtrain once I got onto it. Lots to say about Airtrain but that’s a topic for another day.
London
London was a similar case – I was looking forward to seeing if the Tube is everything it’s cracked up to be. I arrived on the Gatwick Airport Express to London Victoria and tried to find my way to a Manchester train. But Manchester trains don’t go from Victoria, they go from Euston. How do I get there? Take the Tube. But the Tube wouldn’t accept our BritRailPass, so it would cost us £8 just to go from one London station to another.
The rule was modified in my head: If it’s not possible to have every train arrive at a single station, the “glue” between them must be free. Think of an airport – would they charge you to travel on the shuttle between the international and domestic terminals? Of course not!
Melbourne – options
I was talking this over after the trip and suddenly realised that Melbourne is (partially) guilty of the same offense. A visitor coming in on Skybus would (at some hours) be presented with a line up of PRIDE screens almost all saying “Take next train to Flinders Street”. Of course we are already following the second half of the rule by having multimode ticketing – whatever train they are taking from Flinders Street, the ticket they need for it will also cover their trip there from Southern Cross. Also if they came in on a V/Line service they have free Zone 1 travel. The problem is Skybus, it doesn’t cover anything but the bus. Perhaps we should look at the possibility of Skybus tickets giving free travel within the City Saver area – although it looks like an even better idea is in the wings (although I don’t know how influential those backers are).
However, we are very close to implementing the first half of the rule – that every train should go through one single station. And that station is Southern Cross.
Currently the only trains in Victoria (including interstate trains and even Skybus which acts as the airport train) that don’t run through SSS are the Sandringham, Blackburn and Alamein services which terminate at Flinders Street. If (as many have proposed) we make those services form Northern Group services, the collection will be complete. No matter where in Victoria you want to go, you can get a train there from Southern Cross – with at most one change of train (clearly announced) where it’s operating as a spur line.
If we accept that, it would also be logical to move driver changeover, recovery time and the various operational procedures that need to be done to terminate a service from Flinders Street to Southern Cross.
There is more room to add infrastructure (specifically platforms) at Southern Cross than Flinders Street. And the central location of Flinders Street (being next to the major shopping areas on Swanston and Elizabeth Streets) is declining in relevance due to the expansion of the Docklands area.
An even weirder idea – gunzel anti-drooling alert!
If we take the airport example further, we can note that the distance between Melbourne’s five city stations (or even eight if you include North Melbourne, Jolimont and Richmond) is not unlike the distance between terminals at a major airport. I have for a long time been of the opinion that public transport should take a leaf out of the airlines’ book – where privatisation and competition have increased the level of service offered by orders of magnitude.
Suppose we called them all “Melbourne station” and distinguished Flagstaff from Flinders Street by giving them terminal numbers? Or if the gunzels and historians won’t let us do that, “Melbourne Station, Flinders Street Terminal”?
That would eliminate the confusion of “This is a Flinders Street train”, “This is a City Loop train”. All trains are Melbourne trains, and at Richmond it is announced “The next station is Melbourne Parliament” or “The next station is Melbourne Flinders Street”.
On the face of it, none of this would make the service any better from the local’s point of view. But something we need to realise is that international students are forming an increasingly significant proportion of the public transport system’s passengers.
It’s easy to say “Oh, of course Flinders Street means Melbourne! People will just have to learn that” when we’ve lived here all our lives and used it for years. But for a foreigner dragging three suitcases and still jet-lagged from the flight, it makes a big difference.
Long term ideas
One day I’d really like to see tram routes go the same way. Within the City Saver area people really don’t care whether their tram is eventually going to Box Hill, North Balwyn or West Preston. And they don’t want to have three trams come within two minutes and then seven minutes until the next one. What we need is a regular high frequency shuttle along each of the city streets. Missed your tram? Look, the next one is just at the top of the hill over there.
Also, to make it easier for people to get from the station to the tram stop, we need the streets to be car-free. Look at Bourke Street Mall – people will happily come out of a shop and pick a tram without any stressful waiting-at-the-pedestrian-lights-oh-dear-am-I-going-to-miss-it-should-I-risk-crossing-against-the-lights like there always is at (say) Melbourne Central. If we had something similar at Flinders Street and Southern Cross, we would be a lot further toward truly integrating the public transport system than we are today.
Agreed that city stations should be as few and as well connected as possible.
A few points
Firstly, Free CBD travel is a bad idea because it would encourage people who currently walk and cycle in the CBD to take PT instead, drain money and benefit people who drove to the city at the same level as those with a periodical ticket (similar issues with the CBD shuttle tram idea).
Secondly, airports have a unity of purpose, style and function that CBDs do not. Airports seldom have grids of streets between them. I think most international travellers are capable of working out that stations with words like Street and Road in them are likely to be in the city centre where more distinction is needed than a suburb (the reason why changing the name of Spensers Street Station was such a bad idea).
Thirdly, City loop and Flinders St trains are there so denoted becose they are for two different destination groups.
Agreed that city stations should be as few and as well connected as possible.
A few points
Firstly, Free CBD travel is a bad idea because it would encourage people who currently walk and cycle in the CBD to take PT instead, drain money and benefit people who drove to the city at the same level as those with a periodical ticket (similar issues with the CBD shuttle tram idea).
Secondly, airports have a unity of purpose, style and function that CBDs do not. Airports seldom have grids of streets between them. I think most international travellers are capable of working out that stations with words like Street and Road in them are likely to be in the city centre where more distinction is needed than a suburb (the reason why changing the name of Spensers Street Station was such a bad idea).
Thirdly, City loop and Flinders St trains are there so denoted because they are for two different destination groups.
Sorry about the repeat posting. I thought that the first one had not got through. Feel free to delete the first one.
“Think of an airport – would they charge you to travel on the shuttle between the international and domestic terminals? Of course not!”
Alas, they do in Sydney. A$5.60 between Int and Dom if show your boarding pass. TBus costs A$5.50.
” It’s easy to say ‘Oh, of course Flinders Street means Melbourne! People will just have to learn that’ when we’ve lived here all our lives and used it for years. But for a foreigner dragging three suitcases and still jet-lagged from the flight, it makes a big difference.
On my first trip to Melbourne in 2001, having just woken up from my first night there I hopped on a tram, then a train, which passed through the underground Melbourne Central – and I thought it might’ve been an extension of Flinders St station when it’s on the other side of the City Loop. So that’s one example of such confusion.
Meej, coupla comments.
I would support the system in Europe if we said “Melbourne Flinders St” and “Melbourne Southern Cross”. I wouldn’t bother about any others as they are not used by country trains (ie the underground stations)
Agree that TfL needs a way of getting above-ground ticket holders from terminus to terminus via the Underground, even if it was a time-limited Octopus card that had to be surrendered at the other end (or else full fare paid). Or a credit on the above ground fare reflecting the cost of cross-town travel eg Brighton to York via London = Brighton to London plus London to York minus the underground fare.
As for the termini themselves, not much you can do about that!
Disagree with Tom violently!
Tell me which city High St and Victoria St stations are in? What about Loch St? Or Stroud Rd?
And Tom, wtf does “destination groups” mean? Couldn’t fathom it at all. What the train does at Richmond is exactly what it does at Laverton. Choose to go direct to Station X not passing any stations or to Station X via 3 other stations. Tell me Tom, does the train at Laverton have anything differences in what’s written on its desto?
Why would a shuttle tram, which would help people with periodicals as well as those without, undermine those who bought periodicals? If catch the tram to work from the suburbs, then at lunch time catch the tram to somewhere else in the city, why should I have to wait 10 minutes for a bunched tram because you objected to running a shuttle as well? Crazy!
But if you buy a ticket from Gatwick to Manchester, the tube ride is included! That said, I’d avoid the Victoria Line anyway. I’d choose one of the following routes:
1) Thameslink (sorry, “First Capital Con”) train Gatwick to St Pancras, walk to Euston (it’s really not far at all), train to Manchester.
2) Southern train Gatwick to Clapham Junction, transfer, train to Watford Junction, transfer, train to Manchester. (This has the disadvantage of relying on the fraction of trains that stop at Watford.)
3) FGW train Gatwick to Reading, transfer, train to Manchester. (This used to be the most pleasant way of doing it, but the Reading to Manchester train has been ruined by ARRIVA’s idiotic let’s-smash-up-the-buffets policy.)
4) Significantly slower, but easy: Thameslink train Gatwick to St Pancras, transfer, train to Sheffield, transfer, train to Manchester.
5) Fly into Ringway, Birmingham, Speke, or even Southampton (!!!) (but at least you had the sense to avoid the nightmares that are Heathrow and Stansted*).
Note that Gatwick Express is an immense waste of time, and that Victoria isn’t a very useful place to end up (the same can be said for Paddington, Marylebone, and Fenchurch Street). The big problem is the over-promotion of a not-very-useful train.
* FWIW, Heathrow involves a bus to Reading or Watford Junction, and Stansted involves an exceptionally slow and unreliable train to Leicester, Nuneaton, and Birmingham.
Mjja,
Have to disagree with you on this one. In the last year, I’ve been to Tokyo, a global city with a poly-centric transport network with more than one CBD station (and more than one CBD) that made it extremely easy to transfer between PT services and Auckland, which has one central CBD station, but is poorly integrated with surrounding PT services.
Rather than look at the PT system ‘hardware’ (i.e. infrastructure) in these cities, have a look at the ’software’ (customer information, wayfinding, signage) and the management structures for the reasons why some cities are better than others to use PT in and transfer between different services and operators.
LS
New York’s transit connections to JFK bite hard. I take the bus: its cheaper.
To add insult to injury, the subway, LIRR and Air Train are all MTA. You can use your subway card to pay for the Air Train. LIRR is a faster service, and there’s talk of an integrated fare system.
you wouldn’t want a single center station for London or New York: these cities are too big. FWIW, Heathrow connects to the tube system very well. Its those budget airports like Gatwick that don’t sync up so well.
Yep, second LS view
Apart from the software issues (tickets, signage, mgt) the other issue is the preponderance of old stations without lifts, and narrow, overcrowded rollingstock for those with luggage.
OT – I’d like to see the Jap system of home delivery of luggage become more widespread (and B2C courier more generally)
What do people think of ‘last mile’ high speed rail or intercity rail.
Many cities (again, Europe and Japan) will spend up big to get the intercity or HST into the centre of town.
And some of these are polycentric. Thinking of Barcelona with the Sagrada Familia church being undermined by a direct link from Sants to the standard gauge line to France. I didn’t see the work to the north recently, but saw the new line underconstruction on the airport corridor and that was an extra pair of tracks, in tightly built area.
Or the line right into St Pancras from Stratford. Or building the Tohoku Shinkansen right to Tokyo when Ueno or similar might have been sufficient. Or HK Airport Express paying for an expensive dig under the water when a Kowloon side terminus might have been ‘adequate’ and probably ’she’ll be right’ in Australia.
Sorry for the triple post – but given the grief going on over whose corridor the Pitt St or Sussex St underground corridors are…what hope would a high speed rail company who wanted a station under Wynyard or wherever have? Would the powers that aren’t hand over a double track underground easement to a rail operator who might only use it every 20 minutes or so?
Thanks all for the comments.
Max Headway: Didn’t know about the charge for travel between terminals, that’s a Bad Thing on par with charging to go to the toilet. Let’s not emulate that. Also *totally agree* about the unfortunate name of Melbourne Central. Perfectly logical if you regard the shopping centre as the center of Melbourne, which I don’t.
James D: I must confess I don’t know the south of England well enough to follow all that, I spent all my time in the midlands. But when I asked the staff nobody offered me those options – which gets onto Loose Shunter’s post.
Shunter: That was the idea of my “second option”. If the CBD is too big and it’s impractical to have every train go through a central point, a highly convenient shuttle is desirable. Re Auckland, I know that getting the “hardware” right doesn’t guarantee a good service, but I think you’ll agree that the “software” can only be as good as the underlying hardware. For example, Melbourne has great software in the form of Metlink signage and integrated ticketing, but interchange between trams and trains means going through a stream of car traffic, and the tram averages about 8km/h. The hardware is what lets us down.
Riccardo (2nd of the last three posts): I’m not opposed to the idea of a central station on the outskirts of town (like what they’re doing to Wodonga) as long as it’s a single central station, with room to expand for the future, and is well connected to the CBD with shuttle buses. Sort of like an airport. But what you’re describing sounds rather like having the Overdue and XPT terminate at Sunshine and have people change to a spark to make their connection. It might be OK for locals who know the system and don’t have too much luggage, but it’s no fun for anyone else.
A slight off topic post just elaborating a topic mjja touched on.
“Currently the only trains in Victoria (including interstate trains and even Skybus which acts as the airport train) that don’t run through SSS are the Sandringham, Blackburn and Alamein services which terminate at Flinders Street.”
Its not as simple as that, and not entirely correct either, but generally speaking, you are correct.
Trains on all three lines travel through Southern Cross at certain times.
Some counter peak Sandringham services travel via Southern Cross and the loop. Until November 2008, many Sandringham services travelled via Southern Cross during peak times continuing to/from Williamstown, however currently this is limited to very few only, which also link from the Craigieburn line.
Blackburn and Alamein each run via Southern Cross for a couple of hours in the late interpeak period, as well as a peak service from Alamein which also runs via the loop in the morning peak.
On all lines (perticularly those which travel through either Jolimont or Richmond) there are trains which terminate at Flinders Street without travelling via Southern Cross or the loop. This perticularly happens after each period, or late at night, when trains either need to divide, or shunt out for the night/interpeak. The reverse is also true, trains originating there only, formed by attaching trains or trains docking from sidings.
The above examples however, are all the exception rather than the rule, so essentially you are correct. I just thought I’d elaborate on that point.
However, don’t forget, all Sandringham line services on weekends travel via Southern Cross and the City Loop.
Meej, I don’t think I was arguing for it, the opposite if you read my post. And I think Sunshine is a bit of an exaggeration. You’ve raised the topic so I’m exploring it to its logical conclusion. If a VFT ran from Canberra to Sydney CBD, should it terminate at Wynyard? Simple proposition.
Ricc, speaking theoretically for a moment. On any transport investment there are (at least) three opportunity costs:
1) The economic opportunity cost: whether the money could be spent better elsewhere.
2) The right-of-way opportunity cost: whether the land/route being used could have been better used.
3) The network opportunity cost: whether that connection is the best for improved travel (given that any connection will crowd out future competing connections/options and vice versa, that any lack of connection might be hard to justify down the line).
For a VFT, where you need to dig a new right-of-way, and where the connection already exists (which wouldn’t be true for a VFT by-passing/stopping/ending at Tullamarine), the first and third O/C matter most. The question then becomes: is it better to connect a VFT to Sydney CBD directly for an extra billion (2?), or to stop at Central and spend the money improving the CBD metro network, potentially forgoing a CBD connection.
Arguably, Sydney being more dense than European cities in it’s CBD, there is more value ending a route right in the middle, but given the inner metro is less well developed and that we might be talking about a minority of passengers anyway, I suspect the money is better spent on other things.
For VFT, the logical place to terminate is Southern Cross and Sydney Terminal respectively, rather than sending them into the City Loop or City Circle.
At the Melbourne end using (at normal speed) or duplicating (for high speed) the standard guage line via Sunshine and the Albion corridor would be straightforward and provide a compartmentalised route free from interference from suburban services. At the Sydney end it looks more difficult to find such a reasonably underutilised corridor.
If the new VFT line were to leave the Albion corridor and travel via Tullamarine to a clear route north, then additional value could be gained from the infrastructure by running an airport express shuttle on the same track at platforms. Melbourne would have a high speed rail shuttle to the airport for the marginal cost of the rolling stock and an airport station.
Perhaps something similar could happen at the Sydney end. If, for example a HSR route was to be built in from the west or south, then the route could also be used for express local and regional services, Paramatta to Sydney terminal direct for example.
For the amount of value it would add I don’t believe a CBD terminus for a VFT would be appropriate in Sydney. Greater return would be had by providing a useful airport transfer (Wolli Creek?) and a semi-fast corridor through the suburbs (Campbelltown Express tracks to Revesby, then an express track along the existing corridor opposite the SSFL, or from Holsworthy down a new corridor along the western side of the military area past the back of Campbelltown). But, I’d have to be convinced of the economics of VFT in the first instance, and I think we’ve been through all that before.
My logic would be thus:
-attack the constraints on a faster and more economic service in order (Goldratt)
-the first is a decent alignment from Sydney to the South West for freight. If one was found, it would be presumbaly built to a standard that would enable passengers to be carried faster than the freights. It might allow 2 paths per hour for passenger trains on the Syd/CBR corridor
-having done so, you might convincingly get the SYD/CBR rail transit time with tilting stock down to 3 hours or less, which might give you a SYD CBD-Civic/Woden transit time competitive with air all up, including checkin blah blah blah
-at which point, the real constraints on the service become the soft ones – quality of service, atttitude of staff, presentaiton, signage, ticketing, you know the drill
-once these constraints are removed, you then have a question of what to do with the remaining alignment constraints
-the ones in the country will be cheaper to fix, but less beneficial than Campbelltown-Central constraints
I don’t think Sydney would particularly benefit from a small extension to Wynyard at a high cost – the same money might buy a significant stretch of above ground high speed track out in the country.
So to recap:
-the first priority is freight (and there are plenty of improvement ops ahead of the realignment)
-then improving the quality of sevrice on a 3 hour transit time base.
-the finally, selective realignments along the existing Syd-CBR route.
I can’t see SYD-MEL flying witout a radical transformation of the way rail works in Australia -otherwise it will be ‘orphaned’ in a sea of useless rail services.
I have found it frustrating having to change and be delayed at Flinders Street when wanting to get to Southern Cross.
Adelaide would appear to be worse with suburban trains terminating at North Terrace, GSR trains terminating at Keswick and country bus services terminating at their own terminal. By contrast in Brisbane they have done well to bring the three together with suburban/interurban trains, long distance trains, long distance buses and the busway all being built into the same complex at Roma Street.
Thansk GH
I would guess though when you are delayed at FSS, you are not the only one, including potentially hundreds of people going on normal suburban journeys at the same time as you, not just people wanting Vline.
Better to find and fix the causes of these delays, not run vline from SCS to FSS needlessly.
Brisbane has a more consistent policy of running all trains through the city and to the other end of the system. Melbourne uses the loop instead – a big lump of waste in my book.
So, midga, you’re arguing we go back to 1960’s through-routing?
Surprisingly, it’s workable.
Yeah, I reckon it makes sense.