Sad news for Australian bus manufacturing and hope that a solution can be found to keep the company going. Wonder if this is a classic case of over investment in anticipation of big contracts that never eventuated? Similar to Volgren in the Hunter perhaps? Would be interesting to see what really hap...

Wow trains that run along a street, nice!

GazzaOak wrote:Still, isn't it better than have a bus stopping like every 200m or so......

It is, so long as YOUR stop aren't the ones the limited stops bus skips.

I think our double deckers have poor turnaround time because of people wasting time (eg standing in the versatile blocking other people from getting out and whatever and people not preparing to get out, eg they start to stand up when the train stops), our design is decent enough, but its just the c...

Maybe you enjoy buses stopping like every 200m or so...... lol I didn't say that. :P My point is that, in our rush to providing a solution for supposedly the vast majority (i.e. making buses stop less), we are in danger of creating another monster, namely that a large group of people who buses serv...

CityRail wrote:So bringing more distance say 800m or 5 min walk max between bus stops makes sense.

We'll save this statement for you until you're 80, and see if you still agree bus stops should be 800m apart, or if you could walk 800m in 5 mins for that matter ...

Got on the reconfigured Tangara set this morning with the perimeter seating on the upper & lower decks. What an improvement that is!!! People actually moved away from the vestibule area. They really should have this as a standard configuration on all trains.

Bedford-29 wrote:Now are we losing two car makers with Toyota on maybe going list will this mean cars will be cheaper to buy coming from a country where the average wage is fifty cents plus two bowls of rice a day.

We already buy everything else that way, so why not cars?

^RBT means we need a plan B mate. Moreover, people commute early for work doesn't mean they have a guaranteed 5pm off. Also its would be a lot hard to make frequent services after 7pm, so its understandable..... so if your going into the city for the night, plan your night so you don't wait half an...

The middle class suburban family that Wet and Wild caters to uses a car for 99.5% of trips anyway ...

Cathy Wilcox put it best (as is almost always the case) ... they'd all be fast if it wasn't for pesky passengers!!! :P Playing devil's advocate here ... Express buses are a great idea until you find out that it's now an extra 500m walk to the stop. It doesn't sound like much but try doing that in po...

Got an e-mail from Top Gear saying that Brett has left the business, and they've retrenched a few more for cost reasons. To be honest the e-mail sounds almost arrogant - although I assume this was not the intent. I particularly love the bit about "don't call us, we'll call you" on the subj...

Why not ask Japanese enthusiasts to send you one? Or maybe contact the issuer, they may be able to help?

I actually do have a Suica card, sorry not for sale ... it's a Tokyo Monorail version with my name printed on it. Rather cute!

I still don't understand why they persist with this meaningless "YourBus" centralised front page. Most commuter couldn't give two hoots about the faceless foreign corporation that owns the operator which runs my bus service, all they'd want to see is a "Hillsbus" specific page wh...

It's a pretty political statement, sort of implying before Gladys there was nothing then she stood atop Macquaire St with the way...... What else did you expect from a politician? And one who had spent years saying how crap Labor was then did basically nothing (aside from window dressing) since she...

Airvan00 wrote:Sometimes freight is more valuable than passengers.

Actually, freight is almost always more valuable than passengers ...

And then there's TK flying IST-ORD on an A333 which clocks in at 8836 km. Anyhow, fuel diversions, lets say an hour of fuel diversion which costs you about 850 km in range. You're still looking at at least 8000 km of range. Blocking off 70 seats is 6.65 tonnes which is about another hour's worth of...

Not huge news, the rise is pretty much pegged to inflation ...

I'm surprised the customer satisfaction is consistently this high ... who are they surveying???

However on the Cathay Pacific example, the longest route CX flies to Australia is HKG-MEL which is ~7400 km however the the A333 can easily manage flights in excess of 8000 km. HKG-MEL also has minimal winds. There's theoretical range and then there's actual range ... what you've quoted there is wh...

Airport staff discouts effectively have been introduced already. You can get a weekly ticket to the airport which is much much cheaper than buying an ordinary ticket to go there. IIRC correctly, an ordinary return ticket ( which staff can in generally use, and travellers generally not ), is also le...

On the subject of the Airport Line gate fee article - the "something new" is the fact that the article focussed on airport employees rather than travellers. I still don't get why airport staff discounts still haven't been introduced, surely it's not that hard to administer and surely it wi...

Some of us have lived in an era when 0% of the fleet was air-conditioned. Somehow we survived unscathed. :shock: Back then you also had windows that actually opened enough to let air in ... and doors that can stay open to do the same thing too ... We only need air conditioned trains in Sydney becau...

On the discussion of airfreight - what you need to remember is that the bulk of airfreight shipments is actually carried in the belly space of passenger jets. So you'd still need an airfreight processing facility at Kingsford Smith even if you move all the dedicated freighters to Badgery's. As one e...

IMO, Badgerys needs to have most if not all international flights rerouted there. Mascot should be downgraded to domestic only, possibly also allowing short-haul international flights such as to NZ. You could potentially even cut the length of the main runway at the north end, to create additional ...