You don’t need to wait for a billions of dollars to drop from the sky to improve Melbourne’s public transport – making small tweaks to existing services and infrastructure can often make things a little better, and for far less money.
Unfortunately for us, Public Transport Victoria seems to have misread the memo – small tweaks to branding is their modus operandi, such as what I found at the ‘PTV Hub’ at Southern Cross Station.
Originally opened as the “Myki Discovery Centre” to assist passengers in the transition to the new ticketing system, in November 2012 it was expanded to cover all public transport inquiries (minus V/Line ticket sales, but that is a story in itself).
Fast forward to December 2014, and I noticed a minor change outside the hub – they’ve updated the bus photo to one featuring the PTV livery.
Normally I only accuse dribbly trainspotters of caring about the “wrong” train in a photo, but presumably there is someone at PTV who is so anal retentive that they thought that the organisation’s highest priority should be ordering a replacement vinyl sign because the “wrong” bus featured in the existing one.
Bus spotting minutiae
The original photo was of a NationalBus vehicle in the Ventura-style blue and yellow livery, driving somewhere in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne.
Now the sign features Westrans Altona bus #129 (registration 9407AO) in PTV livery outside Williams Landing Station – along with bus #130 they were the first two PTV liveried buses in Melbourne, entering service in April 2013.
Oh dear, I seem to have a photo of the previous bus. It wasn’t just the “wrong” livery, it was also a mystery bus route number – one of the virtually undocumented school runs.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/danielbowen/8434566374/
https://twitter.com/danielbowen/status/297167059048083456
I’m surprised the 15x series of bus routes have flown under the radar for so long.
https://railgallery.wongm.com/bus-stops/E113_5195.jpg.html
Even the new sign has the “wrong bus”. I say this as the livery on this bus is done wrong, like a lot of bus operators. The PTV logo should be on the centre of the front of the bus and that vehicle badge removed. The logo shouldn’t be under the badge. If anything, they should’ve just used a photo of a transdev PTV liveried bus done right.
I’m guessing that ignoring the style guide and keeping the badge location as-is was the cheaper option.
And now even the updated photo is out of date, with Westrans being dropped in favour of CDC Melbounre as part of a rebrand of the former Kefford businesses -http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d113/tram3003/Series%202/IMG_7173v2_zps98d13169.jpg~original
I’ve noticed the new ‘CDC Melbourne’ name around Footscray and Sunshine, but I’ve only been able to find a media release relating to the rebrand of their operations in Geelong and Ballarat:
http://cdcvictoria.com.au/news/latest-news/143-a-brand-new-look-for-cdc-victoria