I set off from the CBD at C̶i̶r̶c̶u̶l̶a̶r̶ ̶Q̶u̶a̶y̶ the Ferry Building.

The ferry set off across the water, C̶e̶n̶t̶r̶e̶p̶o̶i̶n̶t̶ ̶T̶o̶w̶e̶r̶ Sky Tower above the skyline.

The arch of the S̶y̶d̶n̶e̶y̶ ̶H̶a̶r̶b̶o̶u̶r̶ ̶B̶r̶i̶d̶g̶e̶ Auckland Harbour Bridge to one side.

Navy ships moored at the G̶a̶r̶d̶e̶n̶ ̶I̶s̶l̶a̶n̶d̶ Devonport Naval Base.

As we headed across S̶y̶d̶n̶e̶y̶ ̶H̶a̶r̶b̶o̶u̶r̶ Waitematā Harbour.

Before our arrival at the M̶a̶n̶l̶y̶ Devonport ferry pier.

There I realised I could catch a bus back to the city.

So I caught a local bus to the M̶a̶n̶l̶y̶ ̶V̶a̶l̶e̶ Akoranga busway station.

And jumped on a B̶-̶L̶i̶n̶e̶ Northern Busway double decker bus.

To the northern terminus of M̶o̶n̶a̶ ̶V̶a̶l̶e̶ Albany.

And then hopped on a bus headed back south towards the W̶a̶r̶r̶i̶n̶g̶a̶h̶ ̶F̶r̶e̶e̶w̶a̶y̶ Northern Motorway.

I found a separate set of lanes to one side, o̶n̶c̶e̶ ̶u̶s̶e̶d̶ ̶b̶y̶ ̶t̶r̶a̶m̶s̶ ‘cliped-on’ to the original bridge.

On the other side there was a tangle of exits from the W̶e̶s̶t̶e̶r̶n̶ ̶D̶i̶s̶t̶r̶i̶b̶u̶t̶o̶r̶ Auckland Northern Motorway.

And there it was – S̶y̶d̶n̶e̶y̶ ̶ Auckland!

Post retrieved by 35.215.163.46 using

The post A ferry trip across the harbour in Auckland appeared first on Waking up in Geelong.

That’s not my Seddon railway station… the building is too wooden.

And that’s not my Spotswood railway station… there isn’t a station there at all!

So were are they?

Melbourne’s Box Hill railway station has three platforms located beneath a shopping centre in the eastern suburbs.

While New Zealand’s Box Hill station is a single platform on the Johnsonville Branch in Wellington, and run by a different Metlink to the Metlink in Melbourne.

Melbourne’s Seddon railway station in the inner west has two platforms and a brick station building.

New Zealand’s Seddon is a closed station in a small town beside the Main North Line in the Marlborough region of the South Island.

And Spotswood – Melbourne has a nice 1920s suburban station.

While New Zealand’s Spotswood is a tiny little locality in the Hurunui District, about 120 km north of Christchurch.

Further reading

The ‘That’s Not My…’ book series at Wikipedia.

Post retrieved by 35.215.163.46 using

The post That’s not my railway station… appeared first on Waking up in Geelong.

The track is titled 一於少理 (“Yi Yu Shao Li”) and is the work of Hong Kong singer Alan Tam – a superstar in the world of Cantonese-language pop songs. It appeared on his 1983 album 遲來的春天 (“The Delayed Spring”) – hot on the tails of the Men at Work’s original Down Under climbing the charts across the world.

Footnote

Unlike most national days, for most Aussies celebrations on Australia Day don’t amount to more than sinking the piss at a summer BBQ – so just change the date already.

Post retrieved by 35.215.163.46 using

The post Cantopop cover of an Australian classic appeared first on Waking up in Geelong.

Robert Schwandl is a Austrian railfan and author, who has travelled to dozens of cities around the world while curating his UrbanRail.Net website.

In 2011 he visited Melbourne and wrote about what the saw.

Melbourne appeared to me as a great city from the beginning, and even a week later I think it is quite a good place to live, not only because of its extensive and mostly well-functioning urban rail system.

Poor access to railway stations was one observation.

I was often annoyed by the bad accessibility. Probably thought to create a properly separated paid area, most platforms are enclosed by fences, so one often has to walk a long way to the actual entrance when an opening at the other end of the platform would be easy to make and save passengers a lot of time.

In particular the interaction with the ticketing system.

Therefore I didn’t understand either why they don’t put proper ticket gates, if the access is channelled through a small slot anyway.

And the abundance of level crossings.

At many stations with side platforms, the two platforms are not really connected, but one has to walk to a nearby level crossing to get to the other side.

Manually operated doors were another thing that stood out.

The second-oldest are probably the largest number, those are the refurbished Comeng trains. They are quite pleasant, except for their peculiar door handles. Unlike on the newer trains, which have a normal button to open the doors, these have a knob, and you have to manually slide the doors open, which can be quite hard, especially if you carry things in your hands.

Along with our poor quality trackwork.

When it comes to riding the train, I might prefer the Siemens, which seemed to offer a smoother ride, but this may also be due to the track, as on some sections I even noticed with my own eyes when waiting for a train, that the track is not in the best condition. When standing on a bridge, you can also observe that the cars move a lot from side to side.

And the poor condition of the Siemens train fleet.

But there was one thing that stroke me most about the Siemens trains: they are extremely dirty inside! The other trains also have some window scratching (made me feel like home in Berlin…), but the Siemens trains have dirty and sometimes even destroyed seats, while on the other two types I did not observe anything like that.

This may have two reasons – the areas where these trains are used (the southern and the western lines) have a different type of passenger (they say the western districts are more problematic), or, the seats call for aggression, because the fabric used, its colour and pattern, is so horrible that one feels the need to destroy it, very weird.

Confusion with the City Loop stood out.

Inbound trains normally show “Flinders Street” as their destination, sometimes with the add-on “via City Loop”, but I was not always sure whether the train would go around the loop or not

Congestion around Flinders Street.

but between Southern Cross and Flinders Street all trains I have been on crawl, although there are six tracks between these two main stations.

And a lack of information about onboard services once a train arrives.

On other occasions I took a Frankston train at Southern Cross, which was then stopping at Flinders Street for 10 minutes. Also, while the panels in the station showed Frankston, inside the train the destination remains Flinders Street until the train leaves from there, so passengers boarding a train on the loop cannot really check inside the train whether it continues or terminates at Flinders Street. An accoustic announcement following “Now arriving at Flinders Street” like “This train continues to Frankston” would be helpful.

Complexity in service patterns was called out.

It would be interesting to see a map that actually depicts service patterns.

As was the general uselessness of the network map used until a few years ago.

The network map has some flaws, and I would prefer a Sydney-type map with colour-coded lines. While it is difficult to depict the direction the trains take around the loop (this changes at lunchtime for most trains), the area around North Melbourne station is quite misleading. It appears that trains from Upfield continue west to Footscray!

Level crossings get called out yet again.

All in all, riding the Melbourne Metro trains through the inner suburbs, where stations are very closely spaced, reminded me a bit of the London District or Metropolitan Lines, although with modern trains, or even the Green Line on the Stockholm Tunnelbana. But none of these has level crossings, which in Melbourne are a standard feature. These work fairly well, but make the system appear more like a light rail with heavy and long trains.

Finally, a subjective view of what train looks better.

Visually, I prefer the Alstom train, which like the Comeng has a wider waist, or a belly, whereas the Siemens cars have completely straight sides, a bit boring.

And to end.

To conclude, an overall very modern system (in fact, much more up-to-date than I expected) which suffers some problems due to the Flinders Street bottleneck and maybe some other infrastructure issues.

Sounds about right to me!

On the subject of comparisons

Australian transport lecture Alexa Delbosc wrote a piece titled Public transport is always greener on the other side at The Conversation:

As a researcher in public transport, I am frustrated by a narrative I see time and again. It comes up in comments in focus groups and pops up at the bottom of news articles. It goes something like this:

I’ve been to London / New York / Tokyo and their public transport system is better / cheaper / more reliable than ours! Why can’t our public transport be that good?

Australia’s public transport systems seem shoddy compared to other countries for a number of reasons. These reasons make me question whether those comparisons are valid.

The first reason this comparison is flawed is because when we’re on holiday, we don’t use public transport the same way we do in our mundane commute back home.

The other reason this comparison is flawed is due to the super-size of Australia’s cities.

While American transit consultant Jarrett Walker wrote about the The Disneyland Theory of Transit:

Political leaders frequently take junkets to other cities, ride those cities’ transit systems as tourists, and then come home proposing to build the same kind of service. But our values as tourists are different from our values as commuters: We enjoy riding the Ferris wheel, but that doesn’t mean we’d enjoy commuting on one.

And more comparisons

• Thoughts on Melbourne by Jarrett Walker
• Urbanism expert Brent Toderian on Melbourne
• Daniel Bowen compared trains in Melbourne and Sydney

Post retrieved by 35.215.163.46 using

The post An outsiders look at the Melbourne rail network appeared first on Waking up in Geelong.

The Indonesia Institute is Perth-based non-governmental organisation which from their on their web site and list of board members don’t appear to be overtly political.

However in their 2014 submission to the Productivity Commission public inquiry into Childcare and Early Childhood Learning, they veer into very “out there” territory:

The Institute submits that immigration and labour regulations should be liberalised to allow carers from Indonesia (and other Asian countries) to work as nannies in Australia at a cost acceptable to both nannies and the majority of Australian families.

It will be helpful for purpose of this submission to briefly describe how the Institute’s proposal might work. The Institute considers that the following description is realistic, based on the experience in other countries.

• a. An Asian nanny would be paid approximately AUD 200 per week. This is twice the amount a nanny would earn in Indonesia.
• b. A percentage of the AUD 200 would be paid to an Australian agency to oversee the scheme (as is done in Singapore). The Institute considers it crucial that an Australian agency would have oversight of the scheme to ensure the welfare of Asian nannies while they are in Australia.
• c. The host family would lodge a bond with the Australian agency. The bond would be held against the possibility that the nanny was not paid or was mistreated.
• d. The host family would provide and pay for:
  • i. private medical insurance,
  • ii. accommodation and food,
  • iii. a work clothing allowance.
• e. The nanny would be entitled to every Sunday off and a return airfare home for 2 weeks every year (as is done in Hong Kong).

Note the comparison to Hong Kong, as the proposal from the Indonesia Institute is a carbon copy of the ‘Foreign Domestic Helper’ system in Hong Kong – one which has been compared to slavery; and lead to accusations of human trafficking, forced labour, torture, and physical abuse against those who come to the city to work.

Later in their submission, the Indonesia Institute comments how sustainable similar programs elsewhere:

As is demonstrated elsewhere in the Asia Pacific region (for example, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan) the use of caregivers from developing Asian countries such as Indonesia and the Philippines is market based and therefore highly sustainable. There is no requirement for governments to subsidise the provision of care in those countries.

They also detail how they believe such a program will help developing nations in Asia:

The Institute considers that the Institute’s proposal would open a new, highly sustainable, avenue of funds to developing nations in the Asia Pacific region. This is highly sustainable because it is not aid but the result of value-adding economic activity. Indonesian expatriate carers typically return to Indonesia with sufficient funds to purchase property or set themselves up in business. This enduring positive effect in developing countries has support in recent economic literature on development.

However the big point that the Indonesia Institute doesn’t address is the potential for the exploitation of migrant workers – bringing people with little money and no support network into a situation of what is essentially servitude to their employers.

Footnote

Turns out this idea is nothing new – back in 2014 The Age published an article titled Call for Asian nannies to reduce childcare costs that covered the same ground, again quoting the Indonesia Institute.

Further reading

• The original submission from the Indonesia Institute.
• More about ‘Foreign Domestic Helpers’ in Hong Kong.

Post retrieved by 35.215.163.46 using

The post ‘Backpacker au pairs’ and lessons from Hong Kong appeared first on Waking up in Geelong.

Some history

Melbourne’s Comeng trains are currently the oldest in the suburban fleet as well as the most numerous. Having entered service between 1981 and 1988, they received their current interior look and feel during a mid-life refurbishment program completed between 2000 and 2003.

On first entering service the Comeng trains were operated by a two-person crew – a driver up front to make the train stop and go, and a guard at the rear to watch the doors and tell the driver when to depart – but the second person was removed during the Kennett-era reforms of the 1990s, when single person operation of suburban trains was introduced.

Since entering service, very little has changed with the Comeng train doors: on arriving at a station they are released by the driver and manually opened by passengers as required, then prior to departure the door close button is pushed, triggering the pneumatic actuators that hold the doors closed, which then illuminates a light once all the doors have been detected as closed.

Melbourne’s newer trains follow the same general process, but with one important difference – once the doors close a locking mechanism holds them shut, with the only way to unlocking being to use the door open button, or to engage the emergency release lever.

By comparison the Comeng train doors have two flaws: they can be forced open by applying as little as 20.5 kilograms of force applied to the handle,^[1] and as soon as the train loses power, the doors become unlocked. This causes many problems – at the Craigieburn depot they had to retrofit their brand new train wash so that Comeng train doors don’t get pushed opened by the cleaning brushes, and if your train loses power in the middle of peak hour atop a bridge, there is nothing to stop you falling out.

@metrotrains Thanks – pax stranded on a peak loaded train with doors open on a railway bridge, over a road & live tram overheads = big risk.

— MetroTrainsPassenger (@MetroTrainsPax) January 23, 2014

The start of safety concerns

In October 2009 a fatality occurred at Melbourne Central station, when a passenger forced the doors open and leapt from a departing Comeng train.

The Office of the Chief Investigator investigated the incident, releasing their final report in January 2011. They found the following factors contributed to the incident:

• The victim forced open a powered door and attempted to alight from the moving train.
• Due to a faulty component preventing the correct operation of a safety circuit, the train driver was unaware of a door having been forced open.
• Although the existence of this fault condition on any train would not be evident to any casual observation, the train operator was aware that these trains were susceptible to developing this defect. There was no daily pre-service procedure to check for such a fault condition.

The ‘faulty component’ was incredibly small – a simple electrical connection between the two 3-carriage units of the train had shorted out, resulting in the ‘door closed’ lamp in the cab giving a false indication to the drivers, even though the doors in the rear half of the train had been forced open.

As a result Metro changed their procedures to ensure that the integrity of the door monitoring system is checked every time a new driver takes over a train.

However this was not the end of concerns around Comeng train doors, with Transport Safety Victoria issuing a safety notice to the Department of Transport in September 2011 regarding them:

Regulator concerned about train door safety
22 September 2011

Transport Safety Victoria (TSV) has issued a safety notice to the Department of Transport in relation to its concerns about the safety of passenger doors on Comeng trains.

TSV’s Safety Director, Alan Osborne, says the doors of these trains do not comply with modern passenger train design standards and have been associated with a number of incidents.

“Unlike other Victorian trains, the passenger doors of Comeng trains are able to be forced open,” said Mr Osborne.

“Being able to force the doors open of a moving train, or a train stopped between stations, increases the risk of fatal accidents occurring. Passengers should never do this, but the fact is they can because of the way the Comeng train doors are designed.”

A fatal accident occurred at Melbourne Central station in 2009, when a passenger forced open the doors of a train in motion. The passenger attempted to jump to a platform, but was caught and dragged by the moving train.

Mr Osborne has confirmed that the safety notice has been issued to require the Department of Transport to address the safety issues associated with the Comeng doors.

“There has been extensive consultation with the Department and Metro Trains about this issue and we still do not have any committed plans to address the safety risks,” said Mr Osborne.

“It is time to begin planning to address the risks of being able to force the train doors open, particularly as the Comeng trains could remain in operation for the next decade or two.’

In addition to recommending that the planning process start, the notice is intended to ensure statutory safety obligations are met.

Some of the actions referenced in the notice include removing the external and internal passenger door handles, installing a more sensitive door closing control on the doors, and installing a traction interlock system to prevent trains from departing stations until all doors are confirmed locked.

Mr Osborne has asked that these actions are undertaken at the next major overhaul of the fleet, in order to reduce the disruption to passenger services.

The actions will bring the Comeng trains to a similar standard of other passenger train door design standards currently in place on X’trapolis and Siemens trains, which are used on the metropolitan rail system.

The notice requires the Department of Transport to provide a response to the proposed actions once it has formally considered the issues. Part of this formal consideration requires the Director of Public Transport to consult with the Victorian Treasurer and Premier.

At the time of the notice being issued, Alan Osborne from Transport Safety Victoria said that the rectification works should only cost $10 million, but:

“I’m not getting good noises from the Department of Transport that this is going to be funded in the next major overhaul,” he said.

“I’m not saying there’s a massive risk that has to be dealt with right now, but what I do want to see is some committed plans put in place for the future so that we know that these things are going to get upgraded at the next major overhaul of the Comeng fleet.”

Transport minister Terry Mulder had the following to say:

“It’s a concern. We face that situation and we’re going to deal with it,” he said.

I’ll have further discussions with Metro. As I say, these trains are due for a mid-life overhaul and throughout the course of that, we may well be able to do that work.”

As with anything that politicians can’t cut the ribbon on, the issue of the Comeng train doors stayed on the backburner. Transport Safety Victoria complained again in October 2012, but upped the ante:

Transport Safety Victoria has placed a condition on train operator Metro’s accreditation: repair the doors on 96 Comeng trains from 2017 when the first train reaches the 35-year life expectancy or replace them.

It comes after TSV issued a safety notice to the Transport Department in September last year requiring the doors be fixed as they can be opened while the train is moving.

TSV acting director rail safety Andrew Doery said the regulator wanted a “funded, committed plan” to fix the problem, estimated by Metro to cost $12.9 million. “We’ve seen no program to rectify the doors,” Mr Doery said.

We now arrive at March 2014, three years out from the supposed retirement of the Comeng fleet, when Metro finally decides to pull their finger out and started trialling changes recommended all the way back in September 2011.

Deceptively simple, the modification has only been made to a single Comeng carriage (numbered 1097T) and consists of a new style of door handle, which is presumably harder for scrotes to force open with their foot.

Unfortunately the new design also makes it harder for people with frail hands to open the doors – instead of pushing at an exposed handle, one now needs to grip the insides of it with one’s fingers.

So why don’t we just retrofit the Comeng trains with power operated doors, identical to the newer trains in the Melbourne suburban fleet?

Turns out penny pinching was to blame – 7000 new door handles only cost $400,000 while retrofitted a new automatic door system would have cost $10 million.

Adelaide leads the way

Turns out Adelaide had exactly the same problem as Melbourne with their 3000 class diesel railcars. Built in Victoria between 1987 and 1996, these trains used the same body shells and doors as Melbourne’s Comeng trains, just with a diesel engine underneath the floor for propulsion instead of electric motors powered from overhead wires.

In 2009 TransAdelaide commenced a mid-life refurbishment program for their fleet of trains, which include the following features:

• Emergency call buttons next to doors to allow passengers to speak to the drivers.
• New passenger information display panels at each end of the railcar and automated audio announcements.
• Improved hand straps, seat grips and new bike stow areas with attachment rails.
• A new digital public address system with better audio.

Nothing new there, except for this last item:

• Push-button automated doors to prevent them being forced open while the train is in motion.

This is what the original doors on Adelaide’s 3000 class trains look like:

And a refurbished train, retrofitted with push-button operated lockable doors.

It makes you wonder – if Adelaide can do a job properly, why can’t we?

Further reading

Rail Safety Investigation Report No 2009/14 has more details of how the Comeng door mechanisms currently work.

Post retrieved by 35.215.163.46 using

The post Dodgy doors on Melbourne’s Comeng trains appeared first on Waking up in Geelong.

The above photo was in Melbourne, and the tow truck was a privately operated vehicle that could be called out to recover any broken down heavy vehicle.

When I visited Sydney I ran into another broken down bus, but this time the paint job of the tow truck matched the bus:

In the case of New South Wales, the government owned bus operator Sydney Buses has their own recovery vehicle.

Finally, on a visit to Adelaide I found a third broken down bus, along with one very odd looking tow truck.

Nicknamed ‘Dumbo’, this truck truck was specially built in the 1980s for use on Adelaide’s O-Bahn Busway – the double ended design allows it to drive down the concrete busway track ‘wrong way’ to the disabled bus, attach the towing hitch to the front, and then tow the disabled bus out to the public road network.

And still more!

A Broadmeadows Bus Lines bus on hire to Transdev broke down on Queen Street in Melbourne, and needed a tow.

A Transdev bus broken down in Sunshine.

And a Donric Group bus in need of help while running a rail replacement service.

Further reading

• Adelaide’s O-Bahn recovery vehicle at Bus Australia.
• Brisbane Transport also has a dedicated bus tow truck.

Footnote: another double ended truck

A number of commercial vehicle manufacturers also sell double ended vans – two front-wheel vans are attached back-to-back for ease of transport to custom vehicle manufactures, where they are then separated and have the rear end attached.

Post retrieved by 35.215.163.46 using

The post How to tow a broken down bus? appeared first on Waking up in Geelong.

Last month our northern neighbours at the Sydney Morning Herald ran a piece about maintenance work delaying attendees of a weekend fun run:

City2Surf weekend trackwork: Gladys Berejiklian defends decision
Leesha McKenny
August 2, 2013

Buses will replace trains on parts of the Bankstown, Inner West and South lines next weekend, when about 85,000 registered participants are expected to travel into central Sydney for the world’s biggest fun run on Sunday.

Passengers on the affected lines have been urged to plan ahead and allow for more travel time, but Ms Berejiklian played down the likely disruption.

“Around 3 per cent of customers heading to the City2Surf by public transport may be impacted by track work and can catch replacement buses to the event.”

Sydney Trains’ director operations Tony Eid said next week’s work would upgrade the power supply systems in preparation for the increased number of Waratah trains on the network.

“For those impacted by trackwork, buses will depart every 10 minutes from 4.30am on the Bankstown Line and then every five mins from Punchbowl to Marrickville from 5.30am. Buses will operate every 10-15 minutes after 3.30am on the South Line. On the Inner West Line, extra frequent buses will operate between Lidcombe and Liverpool via Regents Park.”

Meanwhile back home in Melbourne, anyone trying to catch a Sunday morning train into the CBD will be greeted with the following:

Don’t you love it – Melbourne’s railway infrastructure is in much poorer condition than Sydney due to the lack of regular upgrade work, yet we still can’t go anywhere by train on a Sunday before 8am because the timetable says so!

Further reading

• Major event at MCG: Sorry, no PT, by Daniel Bowen
• Melbourne’s Sunday trains arrive late – timetable needs shake-up, study by the PUTA

Post retrieved by 35.215.163.46 using

The post Easy like a Sunday morning train timetable appeared first on Waking up in Geelong.

Victorian police harass SA motorists for not displaying vehicle registration stickers

David Nankervis
Sunday Mail (SA)
September 22, 2012

South Australian motorists are being fined by Victorian police for not displaying registration stickers – despite the labels being abolished more than a year ago.

Concerns that hundreds of Adelaide fans who drove to Melbourne for yesterday’s AFL preliminary final would be targeted by Victorian officers ignorant of SA’s rego laws prompted an appeal on Friday by Public Sector Minister Michael O’Brien to Victorian Police Minister Paul Ryan.

“The South Australian Government would appreciate a reminder being issued by Victoria Police command to officers of the legal situation and their ability to verify registration by entering licence plate details into the electronic database,” Mr O’Brien wrote on Friday.

Yesterday, he said some Victorian police were “causing aggravation and inconvenience for SA motorists” who are not breaking the law: “There is no offence committed and Victorian police should damn well know that and there’s no excuse so it’s a case of harassment.”

Independent State MPs John Darley said he knew of two motorists who were fined in the past four weeks. “I understand they had to get confirmation from motor registration that their cars were registered and send that to Victoria Police to have the fines withdrawn,” Mr Darley said.

Stawell police acting sergeant Mark Stevens admitted yesterday there had been an “anomaly” where SA motorists had been fined after the law change. “We had a statewide email go out (approximately two months ago) saying SA motorists were not required to have a sticker,” he said yesterday.

However ignorance of interstate laws isn’t a one way street, if this fifty year old newspaper article is anything to go by:

Warning on registration labels

The Age
Jan 23, 1963

South Australian police are prohibiting Victorian motorises from crossing the border if their vehicles do not bear current registration labels.

This warning was given by the Mildura RACV representative (Mr K. Wright). He said it was not sufficient for motorists to prove they had sent fees to the Motor Registration Branch.

He said an Irymple man who had paid his registration and third party fees to the RACV for forwarding had been stopped at the border near Renmark recently. Mr. Wright said police would not let him proceed even through he had the RACV receipt to prove that he had paid his registration.

This man had to return to Mildura and pay for interim registration. He would then have to wait six months for a refund of the second outlay.

Mr. Wright said hundreds of Victorians would be crossing the border this week to go to the fourth Test, which behinds on Friday. Unless the registration labels on their vehicles were current they would not be allowed to cross the border he warned.

A case of the boot on the other foot?

Recognising vehicle registrations between Australian states has a long history – the Victorian Motor Car Act 1932 describes a convoluted process for motorists to follow on crossing the border:

The Visitor

72. The driver of a motor car registered in another State of the Commonwealth shall on entering Victoria present such motor car at the nearest practicable police station and produce to the member of the Police Force in charge thereof the current certificate of registration of such motor car and the licence of such driver, and shall lodge with such member of the Police Force an application in the form or to the effect of the form contained in the Fifteenth Schedule hereto for a permit to use such motor car in Victoria.

If such member of the Police Force is satisfied that the motor car will be in Victoria temporarily only and that it will not,be used for the carriage of passengers for hire or goods for hire or in the course of trade whilst in the said State, he may issue to the said driver or owner a permit in the form of the Fifteenth Schedule hereto for the use of such motor car in Victoria for a period not exceeding two months or for such shorter period for which the permit is required : Provided that in each case such motor car is registered in such other State for the period covered by the permit.

Thankfully in the years since, the process for motorists crossing state borders has been simplified – the Victorian Road Safety (Vehicles) Regulations 2009 detail the reciprocal arrangements between states:

Exemption for vehicles temporarily in Victoria

131. Exemption for vehicles temporarily in Victoria

A vehicle is exempt from the requirement to be registered if-

(a) the vehicle is in Victoria temporarily; and

(b) the vehicle is-

(i) registered in another State, a Territory or a foreign country; or

(ii) permitted to be used in accordance with a law in force in another
State or a Territory relating to the use of unregistered vehicles
(including a law relating to trade plates); and

(c) the vehicle is carrying, conspicuously displayed in the required way
and condition, all number plates and labels that it is at that time
required to carry-

(i) for a vehicle registered outside Victoria, in the State, Territory or
country in which it is registered under the law of that State,
Territory or country; or

(ii) for an unregistered vehicle permitted to be used in another State or a
Territory, in that State or Territory under the law of that State or
Territory; and

(d) for an unregistered vehicle permitted to be used in another State or a
Territory, the vehicle is being used in accordance with any conditions
of any permit or other authority that apply in that State or
Territory, to the extent they are capable of being applied to the use
of the vehicle outside that State or Territory.

Post retrieved by 35.215.163.46 using

The post Cross-border vehicle registration capers appeared first on Waking up in Geelong.