I'll second that

The Age editorialises that Lynne Kosky should go. I don't think any Victorian would disagree.

Sure, she's not at the level of a Stephen Conroy, who combines malice, dishonesty and determination to do evil all in one complete package of fucktardetry - but she's spent almost two and a half years honing her own unique mix of incompetence, laziness* and general responsibility-avoiding bloody mindedness while a matter of great practical importance to Victorians was left to collapse in her unwilling hands.

I mean - increasing numbers of commuters are now collapsing on the service, while Kosky's department plays funny buggers with media and refuses to supply public documents unless they go through the whole time-consuming FoI process.

Seriously, how much worse could a trained circus animal have done? I reckon this elephant with a paintbrush would've actually done better - at least it appears to be able to respond to the people talking to it.

Brumby - please sack her. And permit her replacement to actually fix the mess.

*And how can someone be that lazy when they've got an entire Department to which they can delegate?

What innovation? What efficiency?

For no more money than handing it over to private operators, we could have a public transport system answerable to voters again. So why won't we?

The Brumby Government has admitted it is "no cheaper" having a private operator like Connex run the system, but says it wants the international "innovation and efficiency" of a privatised network.

The international "innovation and efficiency"? Since it doesn't cost us any less, where's the efficiency? What "innovation" suggested by those overseas have we seen since it was privatised? The farce that is Myki? Trains that can't cope with Australian conditions?

No, there's only one conclusion that can be reached as to why the Brumby Government (and the Liberals) are determined to keep the trains privatised: precisely so that we don't have a public transport system answerable to voters. Connex is a useful foil for a Transport Minister - someone else to blame when the lack of investment by the Government in the system leads to a week's worth of major train cancellations because there's a spell of hot weather.

Unless commuters remember that the buck stops with her, of course. God, I hope they do. Who, other than the Minister, has the power to improve the system? The operators aren't going to buy new trains or build new lines - that's infrastructure investment that the government has to do. But it only will if we put pressure on it to do so.

If I had an opportunity to talk to the Minister directly, I'd be asking her:

1. When is the government going to spend more resources on significantly upgrading the public transport network, both reach and capacity, so that the service for Melbournians is the equivalent or better of when it gained office?
   
2. Why hasn't it done it already?
   
3. Wouldn't it be more straightforward to undertake this upgrade if the government ran the system itself via departments directly answerable to the Minister, rather than through private companies trying to cut a profit out of the service? and
   
4. Could you please resign so someone who actually DOES want to run a train system can have a go?

Lucky for my dignity her that I haven't, really.

Xmas coming early

They've never expressed the slightest interest in giving me something on my wish list before, but it looks like the Victorian ALP might have a wonderful Xmas present in store for Melbourne commuters this year:

Public Transport Minister Lynne Kosky at risk in reshuffle

I don't want to get my hopes up too much - I could be praying for a new Transport Minister and end up with a remote controlled helicopter instead - but it's still pretty exciting. Roll on Xmas!

The buck stops well short of here (possibly due to a signal failure at Jolimont)

Paul Mees on how fantastic privatisation has been for Melbourne's railways:

The main cause of Melbourne's rail woes is a tremendous deterioration in management and planning. Levels of efficiency that could be achieved in the 1920s, or even in the 19th century, are now claimed to be impossible in the 21st century. Things are so tangled that the public doesn't even know who to blame for the collapse of service: is it Connex, or the private company that maintains tracks and signals, or Transport Minister Lynne Kosky, or one of the many divisions of the Department of Transport?

The truth is that under the current system of "public-private partnerships", nobody can be held accountable for anything that matters. Huge subsidies are paid under Byzantine franchise agreements requiring time-consuming monitoring and reporting of trivia. Any energy left over is devoted to increasingly desperate efforts to spin away mounting public discontent. Since nobody is responsible for tackling the real problems, they are not being fixed.

I know, it's awesome. Imagine if instead of rewarding the two major parties that came up with this technique of avoiding ever being accountable for anything, we voted for other parties that would leave the planning and management of utilities in the hands of ONE BODY, answerable to a Minister we could vote out if they did a poor job.

Imagine this horror:

An excellent example is the Zurich Transport Network, which controls all public transport in the state (canton) of Zurich. The ZVV, which many observers regard as the best transit agency in the world, administers a public transport network as big as Melbourne's with 34 staff (the equivalent organisation in Melbourne employs more than 10 times that), of whom only six are responsible for timetables and service planning.

The Zurich staff and their jobs are set out, in German and English, on the authority's website (zvv.ch). Everyone knows where the buck stops in Zurich's public transport system.

Sounds absolutely awful. The really terrifying thing is that it'd also be cheaper than what Kosky's left us - if we ever got a competent Minister for Transport, imagine the damage they could undo cause. Still, at least we haven't had one of those in my lifetime... maybe the risk is minimal.

Still, just in case - I call on Melbournians to completely ignore what Paul Mees is saying and continue to vote for parties which seek to subvert democracy by interposing handy scapegoat corporations between them and the public who pays for them. Allow your anger about the Connex Stuff Up Of The Day (TM) to be vented on the corporation in question and not on the government Minister who keeps renewing their contract and offering them ludicrous amounts of extra taxpayer money if they ever inadvertently provide the service for which they're paid. DO NOT attempt to raise awareness of how counterproductive and dodgy the privatisation strategy is. If someone raises the subject, shoot them down with some vacuous "why should the taxpayers pay for that" drivel, and refuse to listen to anyone who points out that it actually costs taxpayers more.

Please, think of the Ministers.

Why is this not obvious to the State Government?

Melburnians want a better rail system.

Yes. Yes, we do.

It is essential and possible to meet growing transport needs.

Yes. Yes, it is.

THE Federal Government has given the travelling public and State Government infrastructure planners just five years to adapt before a carbon price for transport kicks in fully. So infrastructure decisions to mitigate climate change must be made now.

Yes. Yes, they must.

If only we had a public transport minister who realised the importance of her portfolio and actually gave a damn.

Road lobby unsated

Its been just been fed with a new freeway, but the road lobby wants more. Its relentless hunger CAN NEVER BE SATED. Fortunately, it continues to have the ear of the Premier:

Yesterday Mr Brumby confirmed that the ring road plan was among a range of potential projects other than those in Sir Rod Eddington's transport blueprint, released in April. "There have been a lot of other proposals about other things that we might do (including) outer ring roads," Mr Brumby said.

None of those, of course, involve new rail lines out into the growth corridors in the city, or expanding the capacity of the already-stretched existing ones. If only rail had similarly powerful lobbyists as the pro-road ones listed in the article.

Still, I applaud Mr Brumby for his continuing commitment to protecting Transport Minister Lynne Kosky from as much work as possible. (You'll note he made the announcement, not her.) She really has the nicest boss, doesn't she?

The door fell off

I'm not saying that crowded trains with doors flinging open aren't safe... they're just perhaps not quite as safe as the other ones.

Some of them are made so the doors don't fling open at all.

Terrified train passengers held on to each other as a Sydenham train sped towards the City Loop with a door wide open yesterday morning.

A shaken passenger, who did not want to be named, said she clutched her heavily pregnant friend as the packed train left North Melbourne just before 8am with the door open.

"We were pretty close to the doorway and as you leave North Melbourne the tracks are very wobbly and the train rocks backwards and forwards so we had to pretty much hang on for life," she said.

The passenger said a man near the doorway repeatedly pressed the emergency response button but the train did not slow down or stop.

Anyway, I know that this incident sounds fairly disturbing, and it is. But it's important not to over-react, particularly not by spending any more money from the budget expanding public transport capacity and infrastructure in response to the now rampant overcrowding and clear service gaps. It is much much better for that money to be given back to existing homeowners in stamp duty cuts.

Fortunately, we know that famously uninterested Transport Minister Lynne Kosky won't be asking for any more money from the treasurer to fix the system, let alone expand it to cope with demand. It'd be so much EFFORT.

Why must Connex be punished for your late train?

I know whenever the train is late, again, the thing I'm most worried about is how horrible it is that Connex is going to be fined as a result. Can't the State Government have mercy on them? Why can't it hear their pain?

Well, thank God it finally has:

As the State Government seeks bidders to run the rail networks from the end of next year, it appears to have been forced by worsening congestion problems to offer more generous terms to would-be operators.

Under the new contracts, the fines that tram and train operators face for running trains and trams late, or cancelling too many, would fall dramatically.

Now Connex can provide less and less of a service and save big bucks!

Oh, Lynne Kosky, how we commuters love you.

Sure, the transport expert the Government got sacked from Melbourne University when he was just a bit too critical of them, Paul Mees, fresh from sinking the boot into their transport "expert"'s bizarre plan to put the rail network expansion money into another tunnel instead of, you know, lines out to the suburbs that need them - well, he seemed unimpressed again:

"In any normal business where you put out a tender document this vague, people would assume you were a cretin, and take you for every cent you're worth - which is exactly what is going to happen to us," said Dr Mees, a senior lecturer in transport planning at RMIT.

RMIT? Fucker went and got another job! Dammit. Anyway, that's the sort of petty entirely reasonable point-scoring you'd expect from some small-minded git who actually cares about Melbourne being a liveable city. He wants people to be able to afford to buy a house and still commute to work; he wants people not to be entirely dependent on their cars as petrol prices rise.

In other words, he's a filthy communist and the government is right not to listen to him.

Three cheers for Lynne Kosky and her marvellous reign over Melbourne's public transport system! I wonder what she'll do next to make our lives better?

Lynne Kosky's bizarro-world reasons not to scrap myki and reintroduce conductors

Lynne Kosky is a rebel, man. She doesn't have to play by the RULES, if by "rules" you mean "policy that anyone actually wants" or "common sense".

An unhappy junior staffer in her department has leaked to me a confidential memo in which she sets out reasons for sticking with the farcically troubled myki ticketing system, instead of scrapping the whole nasty Kennett-era design, sacking the suited thugs they call "ticket inspectors" and instead employing conductors that actually provided commuters with a service.

REASONS FOR STICKING WITH MYKI

• It's expensive.
  
• No-one wants it.
  
• There's every likelihood it still won't work even after the extra two years and the publicly-funded bailout.
  
• It will further discourage people from using public transport.
  
• It confirms a ticketing regime that treats commuters like criminals and employs toughs to menace them.

You can see why our famous Bizarro-Minister is so keen on the idea.

Lynne Kosky's office to have seats removed

Like Melbourne's trains, the office of notoriously incompetent and universally reviled Victorian Public Transport Minister Lynne Kosky will have seating removed in a bid to squeeze more complaints from angry Melbourne commuters onto the already bursting piles of hate mail on her floor.

Ms Kosky said the removal of all the seats in her office would "make a huge difference in making me seem slightly less of an insensitive hypocrite".

"Presently in my office there's sufficient seating that I and my visitors can take a seat rather than standing for hours at a time, like we're intending making more Melbourne commuters do. Obviously that makes me look like a complete twat," she said.

"In peak periods when my office fills up with angry constituents, hassled staffers fielding angry telephone calls and the piles upon piles of correspondence demanding my resignation from everyone who has to use the public transport system I never wanted to administer, this will make it possible to move in here."

The changers are expected to be similar to those enacted in education minister Bronwyn Pike's office recently when, in keeping with her announcement that air conditioning was unnecessary in schools, she had [people suggest she should have] the air conditioning ripped out of her office as well.

Meanwhile, referring to the Minister's similar recent adjustments to passenger trains in the city, Opposition Transport spokesman, Terry Mulder, slammed the new seat arrangement, saying "passengers are paying more, getting less, going slower and are now being asked to stand". He said some trains from Pakenham could take up to 77 minutes to reach the city.

"So you are looking at 2½ hours standing on public transport," he said, before confirming his party's firm commitment to slash funding for public transport even further if they were ever elected, just like they did last time.

"Guilty Party" advertisements were horrific, too

It's good to see a transport minister who's prepared to make the tough calls:

Ms Kosky also pleaded for drivers to be more careful when approaching any of the state's level crossings, which have the nation's worst fatality record.

But she ruled out installing boom gates at all Victorian crossings, saying greater driver education would better battle the rising number of deaths since the Kerang rail disaster claimed 11 lives last June.

Look, Victoria, it's very simple. If you want those precious, precious budget surpluses, we can't afford to also give you boom gates at level crossings. (We certainly can't afford some grand plan to upgrade the safety and visibility of the things across the state.) It's one or the other. And by voting for one of the two major parties who are determined to deliver budget surpluses no matter what, you've already made your choice.

I hear what you're saying, though - preventable fatalities are bad. I know, I know. They break my heart just like yours. Tell you what - why don't we look into closing some country roads? That'll only inconvenience people, not cost us money. A good start? We're happy to help. But anything more than that I'm afraid would be testing our fiscal discipline. And I think we can all agree that no growing number of horrific railway crossing accidents is worth that.

I mean, sure - they're awful, absolutely awful. The pictures on the news are enough to give anyone nightmares. But do you remember those "guilty party" advertisements? They were pretty unpleasant, too. Let's not add to the pain and suffering on our TV screens.

We can smash down houses for roads, but not railways

Memo to State Government: Before you build any more freaking huge roads through people's suburbs, could you please build passenger railway lines to the large wedges of Melbourne that have none?

You know that housing affordability crisis? How about making some of the places where people have to live now actually accessible to the city?

Gah.

Oh, wait. That would require Lynne Kosky getting off her famously unenthusiastic arse. At least the roads minister is happy to advocate for his department. Rail industry? You really need to hire some better lobbyists.

Man, that minister does a lot of "defending", doesn't she?

Question: Has Lynne "I don't want to run a train system" Kosky ever done anything as transport minister that wasn't a complete cock-up?

I ask because she's out "defending" another one today.

Transport Minister Lynne Kosky has admitted a new public transport smartcard may not be fully operational in Melbourne until early next year - almost two years after its original start date.

Meh, at this point, I'm hardly surprised. BIG SHOCK: Lynne Kosky remains incompetent. Hardly going to prompt a vigorous debate in the comments.

Wait a minute, what's this?

Documents not included in Auditor-General Des Pearson's myki parliamentary report show the full cost to the Transport Ticketing Authority (TTA) of implementing and operating the new system to be about $1 billion.

Seriously? A billion dollars JUST TO RUN THE TICKETING SYSTEM?

What are ticket receipts in Melbourne, anyway? How long would it take them to collect that billion dollars, and wouldn't it be a better, more environmentally-friendly and socially positive way to run the system if you simply provided public transport as a free government service? Other savings from such a plan - reduced reliance on road infrastructure, reduced road-related expenses (eg from accidents), reduced pollution...

On the other hand, free public transport sounds far too commo to me. You give people the idea that their taxes are being spent on useful services and, well, who knows where it could end.

So, okay, I'd much rather they spend that public transport money on fee-collecting infrastructure.

Maybe one day the ticketing system can even pay for itself!

The tribulations of Lynne Kosky

Dear me, the Age is having another go at transport minister Lynne Kosky this morning, revealing on a morning of fare increases a large chunk of public money spent on fairly pointless "research". (The Age rather cruelly illustrates its story with a picture of commuters on one of Lynne's ever more crowded trains.)

I don't know why everyone's so mean to Lynne, just because the public transport system is creaking badly under her watch (increased patronage but capacity lagging behind) and she doesn't have any idea how to improve it. Don't you guys remember, she doesn't actually want the job! She's only there under sufferance. Really, we should be grateful she turns up in the morning at all.

Anyway, this research isn't all that bizarre. Remember the three articles of civil service faith?

1. It takes longer to do things quickly;
2. It is more expensive to do things cheaply;
3. It is more democratic to do things in secret.

You've got to spend a stupid amount of money on "research" in order to save a small amount down the track. It's only common sense.

Cheer up, Lynne. What's the worst that could come of this relentless campaign against your laziness and incompetence? You could lose a job you lament having. Imagine how wonderful that will be.

Could we get a new transport minister?

Lynne Kosky's explanation for not building new train lines to Melbourne's growing, public transport-starved outer suburbs:

She said the Government's plan included funds to duplicate the track at Dandenong, and for improvements to lines in the western suburbs and at Craigieburn.

"We need to do that work on the tracks before we can look at extension of services," Ms Kosky said today. "We have bottlenecks at the moment in terms of our train services. We need to fix those before we can look at extensions, otherwise we will just have more frustrated commuters."

What complete drivel. It's not an either/or. You should be doing them simultaneously. There are large swathes of Melbourne, huge wedges where there are no train lines at all. Train lines are by far the most efficient method for transporting large numbers of people into the CBD (building freeways really creates more bottlenecks, but you're happy to build those) and we haven't built any new lines for, well, much longer than my lifetime anyway. Why isn't there a rail line out to Doncaster, for example? Just look at the map of Melbourne; it's obvious where new lines need to be built.

And, oh, god, she's on about bloody buses:

She said the Government's $1.4 billion commitment to improving bus services in the outer suburbs would go a long way towards improving public transport accessibility and reducing reliance on cars.

"Buses are a really critical element of improving our public transport system," she said. "We've got our rail networks through trams and trains but particularly in the outer suburbs and across town networks we need to have our buses in place."

Buses just add to congestion on roads. They're slow and unreliable and I can't read on the damn things without getting carsick. WHICH IS NOT THE REASON I'M OPPOSED TO THEM, I'm just saying.

Buses are a half-arsed cop-out measure so that a private company can be responsible for cock ups instead of a lazy minister. So that a government doesn't have to invest in proper infrastructure and can keep putting the problems of "why are our roads so crowded?" and "why can't anyone get anywhere in a reasonable amount of time?" off for future administrations. Which is nice in terms of getting stuff out of Kosky's "in" tray, but pretty crap for everyone who actually intends living in the city for any period of time.

Seriously, I know you don't really want to be running the transport system at all, Lynne, so would you please consider handing over to someone who does?

UPDATE In addition to making some sensible proposals, sustainability commissioner Dr McPhail calls for "the creation of a new government official — a co-ordinator general — with powers to 'call in' and take over difficult transport and planning projects."

Seriously - "Co-ordinator general"? Such a dull name. How about "Transport Supremo"? What an awesome job that would be.

Okay, so some suburban commuters have an excuse for driving a 4WD

A suburban railway station car park in Melbourne

It's my morning 4WD adventure! (Without a 4WD.) Will the exhaust pipe stand up to being scraped through dirt and mud without being bent out of shape or rusting? Can the car make it through the massive hole and up the slippery gravel before it gets bogged and I miss the train? AN EXCITING START TO THE DAY. Thank you, Connex.

And thank you, Lynne Kosky. You're doing a fine job.

That's not my department, says Lynne Kosky

Should Melbourne's trains and trams be returned to public ownership and management?

No. Sure, it's the only way that the infrastructure will be expanded to cope with the needs of the population. Sure, "competition" is a farce because only one company can run the stock on any particular line; it's not as if consumers can "choose" to use another train operator. And sure, the private companies just add another layer of expense because they need to make a profit... but all of this misses the point.

It's such a hassle to run!

Minister for Public Transport Lynne Kosky explains:

"Do I want to run a train system? I don't think so," she said.

Once the timetables are up, who cares when trains come in; that's not my department, says the minister named Lynne.

And fair enough. She's the Minister for Public Transport. Why should she be bothered having to run a train system? How is that in any way part of her job? Why should her department be responsible for running the public transport system in this state just because it entirely falls within its purview? It's simply not fair.

So much work.

In other news, John Lenders, the Minister for Education, mooted selling off the state's government schools. "Seriously, my job would be much more manageable if it didn't involve actually administering the education system," he said. Bob Cameron, Minister for Police, asked, "While we're at it, can we sell off the police? Really, I've got better things to do with my time."

And asked about his Ministers' apparent lack of interest in (what their predecessors considered) their portfolio responsibilities, Premier Bracks sighed and suggested entirely privatising the state. "Do I want to run Victoria?" he asked, pensively. "I don't think so."