Country Rail link bus idea

The Vinelander · Posted: Wed Jul 23, 2008 8:04 pm

PClark · Posted: Thu Jul 24, 2008 5:55 pm

Mike

Having met you, I completely accept that, in your case, the decision to combine rural living with your love of railways was a conscious, deliberate and genuine lifestyle choice.

After all, you were doing it long before RFR and Vlocities came on the scene.

However, not all Vline commuters, cramming onto overloaded trains, are railfans.

For all the talk about "treechangers" and being green and sustainable planet savers, I suspect that many, probably a majority, of these commuters are doing it out of real or perceived economic necessity - Revenue's "administrative assistant on thirty thousand a year" comes to mind.

Typically, these commuters have fairly ordinary jobs in the CBD or other inner precincts where parking is problematical and expensive. For a lot of these people housing affordability is an ever increasing problem and if the only places where they can afford to buy an "acceptable" house are beyond the reach of Yarra Trams and Connex then that's where they'll go.

In theory I don't believe in encouraging long commutes but, in practice, given the way the economic chickens have come home to roost in the last few years, I can't see any alternative.

If post WWII governments had tried to force a growing population into high-density "planned" housing they would have been thrown out of office at an early date - witness what happened to Attlee in the UK. For better or worse, Australians are famously (or notoriously) jealous of their "freedom of choice" and resentful of "regulation" of their life choices.

The Vinelander · Posted: Thu Jul 24, 2008 11:42 pm

Again Peter, on reflection it's difficult to disagree with all you have said.

I'm going somewhat off-topic now by raising my environmental credentials.

I took the opportunity in the mid 80's when designing my new home, to make it as eco-friendly as possible. I learned a lot from the then Energy Information Centre which was located in the old Gas & Fuel building in Flinders St, where Federation Square was later constructed.

The Energy Information Centre was an initiative of the then Cain Government and it promoted the orienting of housing to promote the idea of north facing passive solar heating. It also promoted such innovations as low energy consumption gas heating, and the then embryonic appliance star rating system.

Other initiatives that were promoted were wall & under floor insulation, limiting the size of windows on the south side of new homes to minimise heat loss, strategic tree shading, solar and gas high efficiency hot water systems and many other passive initiatives, all of which I invested in when constructing my home.

Consequently, over the past 21 years I will have recouped all the additional expenses I outlaid in building my home, and making it solar passive to the degree that my energy bills are, today, an average of under $50.00 a month which is still less than I was paying when I was living in my centrally heated Housing Commission home in Laverton in the early 1980's.

I believe my environmental credentials were established many years ago.

The improved Ballarat and other lines train services have evolved as a result of people desiring a perception of a slower pace and an improved quality of life. However I find it difficult to believe that anyone can think they are enjoying a slower pace of life if they are spending 2+ hours a day driving to and from Melbourne, as some still do, even today Exclamation

Remember I also posted some time ago that in over 20 years of working in Melbourne and commuting from Ballan, not once in that time did I feel a need nor did I, actually lock my house.

Mike, in Normanton Qld on holiday after arriving ex The Gulflander from Croydon.

The Vinelander, from Melbourne to Mildura was Victoria's only overnight sleeping car train which was launched 8/8/1972.

Ballan, the best town, on the best railway line, in the best state, of the best country in the World. Currently in Longreach.