Blog entries tagged with "public transport"

For the next three days I will be attending this year’s Open Source Developers’ Conference. Similar to two years ago I have been finishing off the slides for the presentation of my paper which is in a scant forty hours away.

I am also undecided on how I am going to get there. Last year I caught the train from Glen Waverley to Richmond and then another back to Caulfield which took around fifty minutes. I have been playing with the Metlink Journey Planner which tells me that it would be five minutes quicker to get off the train at Tooronga to catch a bus to Caulfield if I catch a certain train.

In a sense this highlights the issue of public transport in Melbourne being focused on travelling to the city. East Malvern station on the Glen Waverley line is actually pretty close to Caulfield station on the Packenham/Cranbourne/Frankston lines and has plenty of options including trains, buses and trams that can get you to the city. However the options to travel across to Caulfield are limited with no direct routes, they all go a fair distance out of the way…

Today was my third day in a row of commuting to work via public transport. I leave home just before 8AM in order to get to the nearest bus stop just in time for the correct bus to arrive. This bus is particularily busy so I have had to stand until most of the passengers get off at Glen Waverley at which point I can find myself a seat while the bus fills up with even more passengers. Fortunately this bus actually passed through the university which means that at 8:45AM I get off at the stop that is around one hundred metres from my office. All up it takes around 50 minutes from walking out the door at home until I walk in my office door. The journey home on the other hand can take over an hour if it is peak hour and the main roads are almost stationary.

This is actually around about the same time that I need to spend in order to ride my bicycle to and from work:

• Go out, open garage door, get bike close garage door etc: 5 minutes
• Ride the 9km to work: 20-25 minutes (depends on how long I have to wait for traffic lights, etc)
• Cool down and get changed: 15-20 minutes

However riding is much less stressful as missing the bus automatically adds 20 minutes but if I leave home a few minutes later I simply arrive a few minutes later. I also have the flexibility of being able to easily make a detour during the ride (for example to return some dvd’s that I had hired) and riding along side streets is much more pleasant than staring blankly out the window at hundreds (if not thousands) of tin cans.

The point I am trying to make here is that it is much better for me to ride to and from work than to catch the bus. I believe in this so much that on Saturday morning I will be spending the equivalent of what it would cost me to buy a bus ticket every day. Yes, I stopped off at the bike shop on the way home (an extra half hour waiting for busses) and placed an order for a Giant XTC-3…

(Unfortunately I will have to endure three more days of public transport as my old bike isn’t currently in rideable condition)