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State Government Padding Out Announcement?

Michael Wyres — Mon, 14 May 2012 00:16:49 +0000

Who would have thought a government might pad-out an announcement to provide more bang for the buck with the press release?

Not you? Yeah, me neither.

Amongst the “features” of the new contract, we have:

Major bridge modifications at Dynon Road, Moonee Ponds Creek, Lloyd Street and Dudley Street.

A new twin track rail bridge over Dudley Street in West Melbourne.

Looking at existing information, the “new twin track rail bridge over Dudley Street” is apparently already apart of an earlier contract, awarded to Activate, a joint venture between John Holland and Coleman Rail.

This will probably – (or not) – come as a shock to the new contract awardees, a consortium consisting of John Holland, Abigroup, Coleman Rail, AECOM & GHD, who will be surprised to see the new bridge over Dudley street almost completed.

Here is the new bridge under construction on January 17th 2012:

The work to modify the bridge at Dynon Road has also been underway for some time.

But people won’t notice this embellishment, will they?

More smoke and mirrors from Mr Mulder? Who’da thought?

Of course the previous State Government used to do this kind of thing too, announcing a new hospital for Geelong, twice.

Message to the politicians – the internet never forgets.

Mulder Has No Interest In Where The Buck Stops

Michael Wyres — Tue, 08 May 2012 01:42:12 +0000

Late on April 30th, I finally received a response from my March 8th complaint direct to the Victorian Minister for Public Transport, Terry Mulder, about the state of infrastructure at Newport station.

I wrote about this complaint a few days later on the 14th, after failures at Newport on both days.

I might add, his response arrived just a few hours after I released another article which took a broad swipe at the minister, in which I complained about the lack of response to my initial complaint.

Coincidence much? Mind you, it’s dated six days before I received it. But anyhow.

Here is Mulder’s mostly canned response:

“Metro is currently delivering a project to increase the amount of train stabling sidings at Newport. Part of the project involves changing the junction between sidings and the main line. Work on this project can affect the reliability of signalling equipment at Newport. Metro expects to complete this project by mid 2012.”

Really? The bottom line is, this is mostly bullshit.

The project to install new stabling sidings at Newport has been going on for quite some time, and actually, appears to have been completed for some time.

Courtesy of the awesome NearMap, which records mapping and aerial photography over time, letting you go back and look at old imagery, lets see how much derp is in Mulder’s statement.

Here is the work site as it appeared on January 7th, 2010 – clearly work had not started:

Here is the work site as it appeared on February 20th, 2010 – work had started, though had not progressed very far:

Here is the work site as it appeared on April 16th, 2010 – work is moving along, mainly on the more southern of the two new stabling yards:

Here is the work site as it appeared on October 20th, 2010 – work is progressing well, and in fact, the more southern of the two new stabling yards is apparently complete, with a train shown in one of the stabling roads:

Here is the work site as it appeared on November 17th, 2011 – both the new northern and southern stabling yards are complete, with trains stabled in each:

So as of no later than November 17th, 2011 – (and earlier photos show the site apparently complete in mid-October 2011, though no trains are seen using the northern sidings until November 17th) – the project to add new sidings was complete.

Yet Mulder is saying they won’t be done until “mid-2012″. I don’t know about anyone else, but I’ve not seen any workmen in the area for months. The “mid-2012″ statement seems more than a stretch to me.

Also, as of January 7th, 2010, the project hadn’t started. Once again, I don’t know about anyone else, but the problems at Newport have been going on for a lot longer than this. Blaming Metro for the problems with respect to the new stabling sidings seems one hell of a cop out.

Even if the stabling project was the problem, how much confidence should we gain from the fact that six months after its completion, it is still causing major problems at this location?

Not much from me.

“To address some of the delays that affect V/Line trains in the metropolitan network, the Coalition Government is proceeding with the Regional Rail Link (RRL) project. RRL is a major new rail line that will provide capacity for enough extra trains to carry thousands more passengers across the rail network in peak periods.”

RRL is a fantastic idea, but the Coalition did not initiate it. It was one of the very few decent transport infrastructure projects initiated by the previous government. It also won’t be ready until at least late-2014, with some estimates putting it as late as early-2016.

What do we do in the interstitial four years? Just put up with all the failures? It’s not just V/Line customers getting shafted here, it is Werribee and Williamstown line Metro customers as well.

Newport NEEDS to be fixed.

Moreover, if “work on this project can affect the reliability of signalling equipment at Newport”, I would suggest that the entire stabling siding project was utterly mismanaged, and reasonable risk mitigation techniques were not used. Reasonable risk management in this instance, would ensure that this work did not affect main line operations.

So I fear for the delivery of RRL too. After all, the same people are likely involved.

“RRL will separate regional trains from metropolitan trains, giving Geelong, Bendigo and Ballarat trains their own dedicated track through the suburban system from Sunshine to Southern Cross. The project will deliver improved reliability for V/Line trains on the Geelong line.”

But do nothing to help in the meantime.

Some of the management issues with the Newport project might be attributable to the previous government who initiated it – but Mulder recently stated “the buck stops with me”.

Yet here, in his weak response to a simple question, he passes the buck straight onto Metro.

You fail Terry. You fail hard.

I will be making a formal response to his feeble attempt to respond to my initial complaint – and I shall be sharing it with you all!

Mulder: The Buck Shoots Straight Past Me

Michael Wyres — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 23:30:01 +0000

Thousands of regular commuters on the Geelong line have had their travel plans massively disrupted on numerous occasions over the last couple of months, with signal and power failures shutting the line for hours at a time.

People – (quite rightly) – have been complaining long and hard about it. It is apparently news to transport minister Terry Mulder however, who hasn’t made a single statement about the fiasco.

Sorry. Fiascoes.

Ignoring the ongoing infrastructure problems at Newport Station, the first major incident was on April 2nd, when a cable cut shut the line down during the evening commute for many hours.

“The high-voltage cable, which supplies power to the signalling system, has been buried for 25 years and appeared to have suffered a break.”

“That was little comfort for the passengers who were stuck on board the trains without food, unable to get off for hours on end. Thousands of other passengers were affected when trains on the Geelong line were cancelled throughout the evening.”

Not to rest on whatever ever laurels might have been earnt that night, just over a week later, the same cable failed again, shutting the line down for almost 24 hours.

Commuters were loud in their disdain:

“The State Government need to get involved now last week we were stuck for five hours on the train, people were pushing the emergency buttons so much they ended up turning them off.”

“The lateness of the trains is an issue for me and getting into work late, they always say it’s a signal faults but I don’t know what that means.”

Of course, you would expect the opposition to jump on such a debacle, and transport spokesperson Fiona Richardson chimed in with this pearler:

“The contempt that the Liberal Government has shown to commuters on the Geelong line by failing to acknowledge that there is even a problem is disgraceful.”

Of course the problem is, the state opposition have absolutely no right to complain about the state of Victoria’s public transport infrastructure, as it was thoroughly neglected by them throughout the eleven years they were in office prior to the Baillieu Government coming to power.

Richardson’s statement is empty political rhetoric, though she is correct about one thing – the lack of comment from Mr Mulder’s office.

Nothing. Nada. Zip.

As of writing, there is not a single press release on the matter on Mulder's press release website, and it has been almost a month since the first of the two major incidents on April 2nd.

Of course, the apparently crappy power cable isn’t the only ongoing issue affecting the Geelong line, and I have previously written about the obvious infrastructure issues at Newport.

As I discussed in that article from several weeks before, I sought comment from Mulder’s office about what Geelong – (and Werribee and Williamstown) – line commuters could expect to be done about this issue. The response was:

“Thank you for your email addressed to the Hon Terry Mulder MP, Minister for Public Transport and Minister for Roads, concerning the above. I wish to advise that a response will be forwarded in the near future.”

Almost two months later, and no response has been received.

Nothing. Nada. Zip.

I’ve even politely reminded his office of their promise of a statement in the “near future”, to which I’ve received no response at all.

Transport failures were a major factor as to why the former Brumby Government was ousted in Victoria, with Mulder promising in opposition to fix the problems. He has even declared recently that “the buck stops” with him.

Terry, we want our dollar back, okay?

We appreciate and accept that things go wrong from time to time – but when the same things happen over and over again, and nothing ever gets done about them, and you say nothing about them, you look like an ass.

Pull your finger out of that ass and tell us what you’re going to do – at the moment your conduct is worse than the succession of ALP transport ministers that came before you.

They did nothing – but at least they told us what they wanted, but wouldn’t ultimately do for transport in Victoria.

Your silence is deafening.

Call To Arms Against Newport Rail Failures

Michael Wyres — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 01:26:44 +0000

Geelong’s commuters – (and Metro Trains Melbourne's Werribee and Williamstown commuters) – have endured another bout of “Newport Induced Delays” in recent weeks, with numerous power failures and “track equipment failures” grinding these three train lines to a halt for hours at a time.

This problem has been going on for a long time – (I previously discussed this over a year ago) – yet we are still regularly confronted with this rubbish, that should be avoidable if someone would actually take ownership of the problem.

Ownership of the problem? Yeah. Right.

I have contacted the Victorian Minister for Transport, Terry Mulder, asking about what is going on, and what is going to be done about it?

I have already received the following reply from a staffer:

“Thank you for your email addressed to the Hon Terry Mulder MP, Minister for Public Transport and Minister for Roads, concerning the above. I wish to advise that a response will be forwarded in the near future.”

Obviously a canned response, but it will be interesting to see the final “response”.

Chances are it will be another fairly benign “we are working towards improving services for all Victorians” kind of response, but we’ll see.

In the meantime, I call on all commuters to write and express your views towards Mr Mulder, just so he understands the problems we are facing.

Like a mosquito that keeps on biting, eventually they’ll have to stop and scratch the itch.

So lets keep biting.

We’ve had enough, right?

V/Line Get a Problem Right!

Michael Wyres — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 01:58:32 +0000

I’m usually the one of the first people to strike out when V/Line commits one of its usual operational-come customer service disasters.

Regular commuters will have heard every excuse in the book – usually at the expense of the what the real cause of the problem is. They either don’t tell commuters what is going on, or make stuff up. Organising contingent action when something goes wrong is usually a haphazard exercise in futility.

On the way home last night, my train simply sailed past my stop. Myself and the other 100-150 people who usually get off this service at North Geelong stood in doorways, looking at each other with puzzled expressions.

Did the driver think the service wasn’t to stop at North Geelong last night?

Well, in the entire Geelong timetable there are only five services a week that pass through the station without stopping, and those are all intercity Melbourne-Warrnambool-Melbourne services.

So drivers should be used to stopping at North Geelong.

We all waited with bated breath for the excuse.

Upon reaching the next station – Geelong – everyone who was hoping to get off at North Geelong were ushered quickly onto another service about to depart for Melbourne.

Once we reached North Geelong, everyone’s favourite station master at North Geelong – (David) – made an announcement “apologising for the inconvenience” and publicly declaring it a “stuff up”.

Finally.

Finally someone at V/Line with the guts to say “we screwed up” – a pleasant change.

So, everyone else at V/Line take note – this is how to do real customer service.

With honesty.

2011: Posts Of The Year

Michael Wyres — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 22:00:08 +0000

I certainly hope my readers have had a safe and happy holiday period. Today, I have decided to take a quick look at back at my popular posts from 2011, with the most read articles for each month, and a little discussion of each.

If 2012 throws up some similar results, it will be another good year! Enjoy!

January: Single Point of Failure

V/Line commuters on the Geelong line, and Metro Trains commuters on the Werribee and Williamstown lines have endured another year of extensive “track equipment faults” at Newport station – and nothing ever seems to be done about it.

“Now, I’m the first to accept that unexpected things happen all the time, and that running an integrated public transport network is undoubtedly difficult, but the regularity of problems at Newport are becoming monotonous.”

February: NBN: End User Services Taking Shape

The rollout of the National Broadband Network (NBN) gathered pace in 2011, and at their February industry forum, the shape of end user services began appearing before our eyes.

“For the market, this means that the providers who innovate and deliver the best products over the network will emerge on top. The competition will be furious.”

March: Online Piracy Not The Problem

Copyright holders want us to believe that we are killing their business models through online piracy, but is it us or them who are to blame?

“The sooner they adopt digital, storage-format-agnostic distribution of their content, the sooner people will stop downloading material in those formats.”

April: NBN: Hands On The Hardware

This article was actually paired with the top February article, but reared its head with a lot of page impressions in April.

“I managed to get a few moments with the hardware that end users will receive when their premises are connected to the network progressively over the next nine years.”

May: Alan Jones And The NBN Fail!

In the midst of another of his on-air anti-government rants, Alan Jones demonstrated for the masses how little knowledge – (or willingness to research) – he has when it comes to the NBN, and this page generated a lot of views thanks to re-tweets from the ABC’s Mark Colvin and Latika Bourke.

“If you are going to jump up and down, Alan Jones, make sure you do a bit of research first, instead of instantaneously jumping at an opportunity to forward your political agenda. Your idiocy will remain on the interwebz forever, Mr Jones.”

June: New Timetable Improves Little

Back to V/Line and another attempt to “improve services” which appears to have delivered little to long suffering commuters.

“We were promised by V/Line that “these changes follow several months of work with Metro and feedback from our customers“. Oh really? Customers asked for slower trains?”

July: The Australian FUDs It Again

Rupert Murdoch’s various media interests – (and particularly in Britain) – have taken a hammering this year. In Australia, they’ve fought a long campaign against the government, criticising it in news reporting and editorial position at almost every turn – trying to be the news, rather than report it.

“Stop trying to make news, and actually report the news. Ironic that you are called “News Limited” – since your ability to report “news” seems rather “limited” at times.”

August: HP Shipping Fail – You Just Have to See This!

This was not the most highly read article on my site for the year, but it was certainly the fastest moving article – at its peak managing several hundred views an hour. Four months later, this one still stuns me!

“If your goal is to be “exemplary global citizens”, I’m sorry HP – you fail.”

September: A Simple NBN Maths Lesson

The financial critics of the NBN project generally scream blue-murder about where the money to pay for it will come from. Some fairly simple second-grade mathematics is all it really takes – demonstrating some quite astonishing revenues for even a relatively weak uptake of network services.

“That’s where the money is coming from folks! And it will come a lot quicker than many would have you believe.”

October: Waltrip: Bathurst A “Geological Oddity”

October saw three-time NASCAR champion Darrell Waltrip visit Mount Panorama, for the first live broadcast of our Bathurst 1000 into the United States. Interested in what it is like inside the cars on our famous circuit, Jason Bright made sure DW will never forget his first visit!

“It was television gold, and DW seemed genuinely stunned by the experience.”

November: Opposition “NBN” Plan To Cost More?

Opposition communications spokesperson, Malcolm Turnbull has been spouting for months about the “reckless” cost of the NBN – where it is starting to come to the fore that his alternative plan, though cheaper in the short term, will be far more expensive over time – a few shared by many, including the ACCC.

“Over time, the opposition plan will cost more than the current intention of building a full FTTH (better) network, before we even consider the lost benefits to the economy.”

December: Screw You, Greedy Music Industry

Copyright protection is a hot topic at the moment, but information that emerged in December showed that the music industry is not suffering as much as they would have us believe – if at all.

“It isn’t downloads that are killing your industry – it is your own overpricing greed and lack of vision that’s doing it.”

V/Line – Could It Really Be True?

Michael Wyres — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 00:14:09 +0000

Regular followers of my tweets and blog posts will know that a subject I am, shall we say, “passionate” about is the performance – (or lack thereof) – of the customer service efforts of Victoria’s regional rail provider, V/Line.

Any regular commuter with an ounce of common sense understands that things go wrong from time to time, and that these things are often completely out of the control of V/Line. Such as cement trucks landing on train lines.

Where V/Line constantly fail is keeping their customers informed about what is going on when things do go wrong. This should be a basic customer service principle.

Following what turned out to be my immensely popular blog post following the "fuel fault" incident last week, I was contacted by V/Line, seeking my input in regards to what they can do to improve their customer communications.

Say what? Could it be they are finally ready to listen? Oh, the shock and awe.

I’m happy to help them too. This has been the reason I’ve complained long and loud about this subject, and it seems I have finally had some measure of success. There’s no point ignoring the opportunity.

So, here’s YOUR challenge.

If you are reading this post, and you feel you want something brought to their attention about their customer service efforts, please post your thoughts in the comments of this post – I’ll be only to happy to collate them up and send them on to my contact at V/Line.

We’ve all complained long and hard – now lets put our thoughts where our mouths are – while they’re listening.

Our Customers Are Idiots: V/Line

Michael Wyres — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 05:28:39 +0000

Long suffering Geelong V/Line customers copped another penalty for trying to do the right thing and support public transport yesterday morning when the 4:43am service from Marshall to Melbourne’s Southern Cross Station ran out of fuel at Footscray, halting all trains behind it.

This included metropolitan services on the Werribee and Williamstown lines, and caused “knock-on” effects in other parts of the network.

Thousands of commuters were disrupted because someone didn’t put enough fuel in the tank. I mean seriously, incompetent much?

Of course, V/Line themselves came up with a raft of the usual excuses, and even some new ones.

“The gauge was checked this morning as it always is, from the outside. It appeared that there was enough 'petrol' in the tank. The driver doesn’t have that same gauge in the cabin and it broke down at Footscray unfortunately.”

(NOTE: I’ve chosen to ignore the fact that if they had put petrol in the tank, it wouldn’t have got anywhere – (let alone Footscray) – since it runs on diesel fuel.)

“He did check the gauge on the train and it appeared there was enough fuel to make the trip.”

So, he checked the gauge – but not the tank? How about giving the tank a quick tap with your foot, to see if it SOUNDS empty? Or having a look INSIDE the tank? Or – (and this is a radical idea) – how about just filling all the tanks up at the start of each day?

A few simple tests and/or procedures and none of this debacle would have occurred.

The bottom line is, as people with (hopefully) common sense, commuters do understand that things go wrong from time to time. Shit happens as they say. We accept that.

V/Line’s biggest problem is (still) its ability to not communicate with its passengers when things do go wrong.

This incident occurred at 5:45am. At this point, alarms should be ringing, and customers should start getting informed. The response from V/Line?

Nothing.

I boarded a train at North Geelong at 6:33am – was there any platform announcement to expect delays? No. If there had been, I would have returned to my car and driven to work, so as to not be late to the seminar I was attending yesterday morning.

When the train reached Lara at about 6:45am, the conductor informed us of the problem, and that we’d be delayed. Of course, I was now many kilometres from my car back at North Geelong, and now had no choice but to wait out the delay.

And they’d already known for an hour – so yes, I was late for my seminar.

Poor excuse for customer service, no? This is not an isolated incident – this is exactly how V/Line perform whenever there is a problem. How about this one, or even this one?

And who could forget this one?

Well, today there has been even more demonstration of the contempt V/Line holds for their customers. Of their “vlineinform” Twitter account, they said today:

“The way it was set up was to only look for delays of more than 30 minutes. We are in the process now of fixing that.”

Oh really? Why was it spitting out these updates on Tuesday night?

Forgive my maths, but are not delays of “15 mins” and “28 mins” less than “30 mins”?

Let’s flash forward to yesterday morning, where delays of “up to 47 minutes” were experienced as a result of the “fuel fault”.

Hang on – now there aren’t any tweets at all about the Geelong line, even though there are delays of “47 minutes” which is more than “30 minutes”.

What?

So setup “to only look for delays of more than 30 minutes” is clearly wrong. A lie, or just no idea.

So lets make something up.

Notice also the tweet from Metro Trains of delays of “50 minutes” in regards to this EXACT incident. I think that’s more than “47 minutes” as well.

How are the V/Line trains being delayed for a shorter period of time, on the same piece of track?

We do have a brain V/Line. We see what’s going on, we are intelligent people.

Pointless PR rubbish that is just clearly wrong, and simply never keeping your customers informed is just contempt for the people who pay to ride your “services”.

Ultimately, we give you a job. A job you’re not doing – and we’re sick of it.