The example I found was on Anderson Road in Sunshine, and offered travel times to Taylors Lakes.

Via two routes – McIntyre Road and Sunshine Avenue through Keilor, or Forrest Street and Station Road through Deer Park.

Someone mentioned they first started seeing them between Melbourne’s first two lockdowns, and then I remembered the ‘Keeping Victorians Moving’ package that the Victorian Government blew $340 million on back in June 2020.

Keeping Victorians Moving During Coronavirus
30 June 2020

The Andrews Labor Government is making it easier for people and goods to get around Melbourne with better technology, more specialist staff and stronger enforcement of clearways in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Minister for Roads and Road Safety Ben Carroll today unveiled a $340 million package of measures to make it easier for people and freight to get around on our roads.

The coronavirus pandemic has dramatically altered the way Melburnians move around the city with more people now expected to use cars to get around.

The number of people making trips on Melbourne’s roads each day is increasing, with road traffic now only 17 per cent below normal levels, while passenger numbers on public transport are 71 per cent less than the same time last year.

To keep Melburnians moving during this time, we’re ramping up direct traffic interventions by tasking more response crews and traffic engineers with tackling congestion hotspots, incidents and blockages on the network.

Three key traffic hotspots in the western, eastern and south eastern suburbs of Melbourne will also be blanketed with the technology and resources to help keep traffic moving, reduce delays and provide drivers with better traffic information.

Almost 700 CCTV cameras will be installed to identify bottlenecks as soon as they start and more than 200 wireless travel time sensors and 40 new visual message boards will put live traffic data in the hands of our traffic management centre and drivers.

Six extra incident response crews and dozens more specialist traffic engineers will be hired to keep our roads moving around the clock – creating jobs and reducing delays from unexpected events.

The timing of hundreds of traffic lights – along with traffic patterns and crash data – will be analysed and re-sequenced to maximise traffic flow along some of the busiest routes in the targeted areas.

So that’s one of the 40 visual message boards installed around Melbourne – at a cost that had increased to $388 million when it was included in the 2020-21 Victorian Budget.

The Department of Transport started the objective of the initiative was:

To maximise arterial road performance and minimise unnecessary delays for all road users with more dedicated onroad capability and technology.

And detailed their progress as of May 2021.

Key activities include:

• Roll out of 691 CCTV cameras, 210 Bluetooth travel time detectors, 42 live travel time signs and 75 dynamic pedestrian detectors and perform signal route reviews on 759 sites and provide greater visibility of the road network
• Procurement of a situational awareness system, implement an improved data fusion model and deploy 7 fixed and 4 mobile Air Quality emissions stations across metropolitan Melbourne.
• Recruitment of 154 roles, including congestion managers and surveillance staff.
• Procurement of additional new vehicles for the onroads teams.

Progress achieved against key Government outcomes:

• Asset deployment team has delivered 520 CCTV cameras, 193 Bluetooth detectors, 26 permanent variable messaging system (VMS), 27 dynamic pedestrian detectors and 2 vehicle detectors.
• The draft data fusion model is in operation, Trial Air Quality emissions station has been deployed and a contract for four mobile Air Quality stations has been awarded.
• Six Incident Response vans have arrived and are undergoing fit-out.

And the breakdown of funding per budget year:

2020-21
$108.7 million

2021-22
$45.7 million

2022-23
$28.9 million

2023-24
$28.9 million

That only adds up to $212.2 million, so what about the other $176 million – perhaps another six years of operating costs, at $28.9 million per year.

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Cleaning

“Hygiene Theater” is still an everyday operation on the Melbourne rail network. Wiping down the handrails may make some sense.

But a ‘hygiene team’ wiping down bus stops is just stupid.

Especially given that the most common litter at railway stations now seems to be discarded face masks.

Face masks

The messaging around the wearing of masks has ramped up, with signage at stations.

Bus stops.

And flyers onboard trams.

Ticket offices at railway stations advice that masks are available.

And Authorised Officers have disposable face masks to hand out.

But some of the signage is poorly thought out – the plague of stickers applied to V/Line’s VLocity fleet makes it impossible to see out the train door.

A similar situation occurring on their older locomotive hauled stock.

And advertising covered trams are now *completely* covered in stickers – the ‘wear a face mask while travelling’ stickers have token section of uncovered windows on each door.

Check-in QR codes

In June 2021 the roll out of Service Victoria check-in codes across the public transport network commenced.

Locations like Sunshine station have a generic location covering the entire stations, while larger stations such as North Melbourne and Flinders Street Station has a unique QR code per platform.

Tram stops have also received QR codes, which feature address, stop number and TramTracker ID.

Messages of kindness

With the bottom fallen out of the outdoor advertising market, ooh!Media started running ‘Be kind to those on the frontline of the COVID-19 crisis’ advertisements on their otherwise empty digital media screens at railway stations.

Transdev has been running ‘Thank you frontline heroes’ / ‘We are all in this together’ / ‘Flatten the curve’ messages on their empty buses.

And PTV ran ‘Thank you for being patient and kind. It’s never okay to abuse transport staff’ campaign.

And a nifty lift

After years of waiting for a reliable and accesssible way to access the station, Watergardens station has received three new lifts, one of which has a nifty feature – it’s 100% contactless.

Just walk up to it, and the lift call button will light up.

A a lift will arrive automatically, taking you up to the concourse.

Amazing!

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So what is Tram Detective?

Tram Detective is a tool I built that collects data from the TramTracker API every 10 minutes for every tram in Melbourne.

It then slices and dices the data to give insights into how the fleet is deployed, when new trams enter service, old trams are retired, and give gunzels a ‘heads up’ for unusual tram movements.

So lets go digging

The Victorian Government coronavirus website has a list of exposure sites, with route 82 tram from Footscray to Edgewater on 10/07/2021 between 7:51pm – 8:14pm one of them.

Finding out which trams were running on route 82 on July 10 was easy – Tram Detective has a page that does just that already.

A total of 12 trams ran a route 82 service that day – Z3.118, 124, 125, 130, 147, 154, 165, 179, 181, 186, 212, 218 and 228.

Tram Detective also lets you drill down to specific trams and see what route they were running on a given day, as well as at a specific time – but it doesn’t give you a way to see their exact location.

For that I had to run a query on the backend database that powers the site.

SELECT tramid, sighting, destination, direction FROM trams_history WHERE routeNo = 82 AND sighting > '2021-07-10 19:40' AND sighting < '2021-07-10 20:30' ORDER BY tramid, id;

And after waiting for my poor database server to filter through years worth of data, it gave me an answer.

During the exposure period there were six trams running on route 82 - Z3.124, 125, 165, 181, 218 and 228. Taking a closer look at the data, one can determine in which direction they are headed.

• Z3.124 was headed for Footscray during the entire exposure period.
• Z3.218 and Z3.228 were headed for Moonee Ponds during the entire exposure period.
• Z3.165 was headed for Footscray, arriving at the terminus sometime between 7:54pm and 8:04pm.
• Z3.125 was headed for Footscray, arriving at the terminus sometime between 8:12pm and 8:22pm.

Which leaves tram Z3.181 - it was was headed for Footscray at 7:40pm then headed back towards Moonee Ponds at 7:50pm - right in the middle of the exposure period.

July 20 - a correction

My original post flagged Z3.186 as the affected tram, based on the following data:

Turns out I messed up the database query that I was running!

My server saves datetime data in the server timezone, and application code converting the value back to Melbourne time when you view the page. By leaving this timezone conversion out of my SQL queries, I was looking at the wrong slice of time, and came to an incorrect conclusion.

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Coming to cinemas?

In March 2020 I spotted a bus with advertisements for ‘Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway‘ – in cinemas March 19.

The pandemic saw that date canned, the film being released a year later on 25 March 2021.

And in September 2020 I found a big advertisement for ‘Trolls World Tour‘ – in cinemas March 26. Did they mean 2020 or 2021?

Turns out it was March 2020 – the film was again delayed, eventually being released on 17 September 2020.

By December 2020 film studios must have learnt their lesson, and realised that your release date could be pulled out from beneath you – ‘The Dry‘ was advertised as ‘In cinemas soon’.

On 11 December 2020 the film premiered in Melbourne, with a full theatrical release following from 1 January 2021.

The bottom falls out of the ad market

With everyone stuck at home, why would an advertiser bother spending money putting their message out onto empty streets. As a result buses were stripped of outdated advertisements.

Or covered with ‘house ads‘ for the Pigeon Project market research program run by outdoor advertising company JCDecaux.

But one winner

One company making money from people stuck at home was online streaming services – and they splashed out big on bus advertising. Amazon Prime Video was one.

Stan.

Disney Plus.

And Hayu.

And trams too

Travel writer Tim Richards was stuck at home in Melbourne, and discovered that trams were still advertising the cancelled 2020 Melbourne International Comedy Festival.

Sigh, those trams from the alternate dimension where we didn’t have a pandemic and the Melbourne International Comedy Festival took place are still leaking through to our dimension: pic.twitter.com/EvlSnKtG0T

— Tim Richards (@Aerohaveno) September 12, 2020

Further reading

Over on Curbed they wrote about a similar phenomenon elsewhere in their piece ‘The Zombie Billboards of Locked-Down New York‘.

Standing on a subway platform now, it looks as if Riverdance’s big 25th anniversary show just opened, David Byrne’s American Utopia is still enjoying a limited Broadway run, and Mrs. America, the Phyllis Schlafly miniseries, is set to hit Hulu next month — April 2020. In stations across New York City, LaKeith Stanfield and Issa Rae have now been touching foreheads in ads for The Photograph for two Valentine’s Days. It’s the same on the streets: Cars driving into the Midtown Tunnel from Queens throughout the year were reminded that A Quiet Place Part II was supposed to open on March 20; the film won’t hit theaters until this May, but the billboard stayed up nearly until March 2021.

The zombie ads have stayed up simply because no one is buying new ones.

And over at Wikipedia they have an article detailing the “impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on cinema“.

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Cleaning

‘We’re deep-cleaning and disinfecting this vehicle every day’ stickers have appeared on buses.

V/Line trains.

And Metro trains.

At stations

‘Keep your distance where you can’ signage has appeared all over railway stations.

On floors.

And walls.

Interestingly all of the above signage lacks any PTV or Victorian Government branding.

Seats inside railway stations waiting room have also been blocked off.

In order to enforce social distancing.

More posters have also sprung up at railway stations, which as this ‘Keep your distance where you can’ example.

The introduction of mandatory face covering and the 8pm curfew saw ‘Reduced nightly services from 8pm to 5am’ and ‘Wear a face covering over your nose and mouth’ posters joining the array.

At West Footscray there was a ‘Wait for an empty lift’ poster, beside a Department of Health and Human Services ‘Restricted Postcodes’ information sheet.

At Footscray station I found that the lift call button had been replaced with a contactless version. I’ve yet to find another examples in my limited travels.

Hand sanitiser dispensers have been installed at railway stations.

Buses

The rollout of rear door boarding has extended to bus operators beside Transdev Melbourne.

A new ‘Top up before you travel’ message added on the side of a bus, following the permanent abolition of cash fares.

With ‘Please touch on and off at the rear doors’ signs being placed over the front myki reader.

And V/Line

Stations serviced by V/Line trains have seen ‘Travel to regional Victoria is not permitted’ signage put up.

And you can’t blow a whistle with a mask on, so conductors now use an electronic whistle to indicate ‘stand clear’ to passengers.

‘Wendy Whistle‘ is now on JobKeeper.

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Changes

I’ve been lucky enough to be able to work from home since March, but I ventured back in early April to pick up some stuff from the office – where I found the Melbourne CBD virtually empty.

Normally parked cars at Tottenham station overflow into the neighbouring grassy patch, turning it into a mud hole, but it’s now empty with everyone staying home.

At railway stations coronavirus posters have replaced the usual promotions.

Encouraging social distancing on escalators.

Victorian Government announcements on repeat.

Recorded by Philip Mallis

And cash payments stopped at the ticket office.

Trams have blocked the front row of seats out of use, to shield drivers.

Already on buses, now also trams. #shunthefrontrow pic.twitter.com/1yq3wv8XDg

— Tony Morton (@tonybmorton) March 23, 2020

With Transdev Melbourne taking it one step further – asking passengers to use the rear door to enter and exit the bus.

But V/Line replacement road coaches make do with a government health warning sticky taped to the door.

And the same

Back in early April SkyBus was still serving Melbourne Airport – the passenger on the top deck of this service wearing a mask.

As was the City Circle tram around the Melbourne CBD.

Authorised Officers were still roaming the rail network.

Freight trains have also kept moving.

Transport steel, containers, grain, and everything else that usually moves by rail.

So what have I been up to?

If you’re a regular visitor to my photo gallery you might have noticed I been uploading a lot less photos recently – this graph really shows the decline.

The last time I uploaded so few photos was when I went overseas!

But luckily for you I haven’t been wasting the Coronavirus lockdown – I’ve been still regularly updating this blog, along with my Hong Kong transport and European rail spinoffs, and slowly uploading my backlog of non-train photos to Flickr.

You can head over to https://www.patreon.com/wongm to get a sneak peek at what’s coming soon on my blogs.

Footnote

Daniel Bowen has written more about COVID-19 and Melbourne transport on his blog.

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