To be accurate, the message wasn’t complete gibberish – but {"Colour": "#009639", "text": "Flinders Street"} – JSON formatted data for ‘Flinders Street’ and hex colour code for green ‘#009639‘.

Many people guessed that the cause of this bug is “colour” vs “color” spelling, with CSS requiring the use of the American ‘color’ spelling, but it’s actually a much more obscure bug…

The backstory

When first delivered back in the early-2000s, the fleet of Siemens trains in Melbourne were fitted with a low resolution LED matrix display to show the names of upcoming stations.

However two decades later this passenger information and communication system was approaching the end of life, so an upgraded system was installed in two stages – the first being the new hardware being installed, but operating the same as the previous system, but on the new high resolution LED displays.

And followed by stage two – a software change to show a dynamic route map to passengers.

But there was one problem – the Siemens trains are 3-car sets, coupled together to form a 6-car train in normal operation, with communication signals sent across the coupler.

But if an train with the updated dynamic route map software leads an unmodified train, the payload for other half of the train to display is JSON formatted, which an unmodified train doesn’t know how to handle, and so blindly spits out the gibberish to the passenger facing displays.

At least the data structure they chose wasn’t XML – or even worse, YAML.

A Twitter related footnote

I originally posted the above video to Twitter, went to bed, and realised a few days later it had 830,000 views, 21,000 likes 1,900 retweets and 83 comments against it.

I didn’t notice it at the time because I’m not a heathen who enables notifications on their phone.

Post retrieved by 37.59.21.100 using Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/30.0.1599.66 Safari/537.36

The post On a Siemens train headed to JSON station appeared first on Waking up in Geelong.

Philip Mallis photo

The back story

The City Loop encircles the Melbourne CBD, with train services from different lines taking different routes around it at different times of day, before finally arriving at Flinders Street.

And because the loop consists of four independent tunnels, train services can continue running on one line while another one is closed.

But what about passengers on the line which isn’t running through the City Loop?

Answer – they catch a “Train Replacement Train”.

Confusion abounds

These “train replacement trains” start at Flinders Street, then visit Southern Cross, Flagstaff, Melbourne Central and Parliament, before arriving back at Flinders Street.

Screens on the concourse at City Loop stations call this replacement service the “City Circle”.

Philip Mallis photo

But the screens at platform level call them a ‘Flinders Street’ train.

And the trains running these services just show ‘Special’ on the front.

While back at Flinders Street Station, it’s called a ‘City Loop’ train.

Confused?

Enter the ‘City Circle’

With four independent tunnels in the City Loop looping around the CBD, each one needed a name.

MURLA diagram, undated

Based on which train lines they are connected to.

• Northern Loop – serving the lines through North Melbourne,
• Burnley Loop – serving the lines headed towards Burnley,
• Caulfield Loop – serving the lines headed towards Caulfield, and finally
• Clifton Hill Loop / City Circle – serving the lines towards Clifton Hill, along with a branch back to Flinders Street.

The Clifton Hill / City Circle name can be seen on tunnel walls.

And on emergency exit signage.

The most interesting feature of the Clifton Hill / City Circle tunnel is an underground junction, located just south of Parliament station – a popular spot for urban explorers before security was upgraded.

To avoid any unwanted attention I’m not going to link back to the original photographer

The other end of the tunnel is located beneath the Exhibition Street bridge.

My only photo of the junction was taken hanging out of the open window of a Hitachi train, packing a high powered flashgun.

But I recently made a special expedition to the portal to capture it in use.

And after a loud TOOT an X’Trapolis train emerged from underground.

Headed up the ramp bound for Flinders Street Station.

Footnote: some photos from the past

Until August 1993 the ‘City Circle’ service operated full time to provide cross-CBD travel, until it was replaced by the newly-introduced free City Circle Tram service at ground level.

But City Circle trains still ran as required for operational reasons – I stumbled upon one at Flinders Street platform 1 back in 2005, advertised as a ‘City Circle’ service on the old CRT next train display system.

And took one for a ride in 2012, with the displays onboard the train calling it a ‘City Circle train’.

So that’s great progress in the past decade – going from consistent ‘City Circle’ messaging towards passengers, to a mix of ‘City Circle, ‘Flinders Street’, and ‘Special’.

Post retrieved by 37.59.21.100 using Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/30.0.1599.66 Safari/537.36

The post Melbourne’s mysterious ‘City Circle’ train appeared first on Waking up in Geelong.

I found my first example at Melbourne Central station, where arrows on a directional sign at concourse level can be turned on or off, depending on which direction the escalators are running in.

The reason for the sign – Melbourne Central has a number of escalators that don’t have a matching set alongside, meaning that they only operate in the ‘peak’ direction.

I then found a similar sign on the concourse at Flagstaff station, directing passengers down the escalators to platform level.

Again, the reason for the sign is the escalators – the direction of operation is changed in peak times to move passengers in the dominant direction, with passengers headed the other way only having on route to follow.

Finally, I found this illuminated ‘Degraves/Flinders Street Exit via subway’ sign at Flinders Street Station.

It directs passengers towards the ticket gates at the Campbell Arcade subway.

This exit sees little use outside peak hour, so is often closed late at night, hence the indication can be switched off to avoid sending passengers on a while goose chase.

Another Flinders Street Station footnote

Until a few years ago the Southbank and Elizabeth Street exits from Flinders Street Station were closed between 10pm at night and 6am in the morning – station signage pointing out the operating hours.

I wonder why the Degraves Street exit warranted an illuminated sign, but Southbank and Elizabeth Street had to settle for fixed times?

And on the subject of ticket gates

Myki ticket gates also have illuminated directional signs on them – green for open, red for closed.

As did the previous Metcard ticket gates.

However these indications aren’t very useful in peak times, when crowds of passengers block them from view.

A more useful solution is an additional set of open/closed indications located above the gates, such as this setup in Sydney.

The indications are also deceptive when the Myki gate develops a fault, displaying the ‘go’ indication on the approach, but the ticker reader isn’t active.

Post retrieved by 37.59.21.100 using Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/30.0.1599.66 Safari/537.36

The post Dynamic directional signs at Melbourne railway stations appeared first on Waking up in Geelong.

You’re probably going to look at one of these screens – but what order are the trains being displayed in?

It isn’t alphabetical – South Morang occupies the first two slots. Is it ordered by the network map? Possibly – Cranbourne is next to Pakenham, and Alamein is next to Glen Waverley.

Worked it out yet?

I’ll give you the answer – the next two services for each line are displayed, no matter where they terminate, and the lines are grouped by their operational ‘groups’ – ‘Clifton Hill’, ‘Burnley’, ‘Northern’, ‘Caulfield’, ‘Cross City’ and V/Line.

The same ordering logic is applied on the smaller ‘summary’ boards scattered around the station, just squeezed into less space and with a smaller font.

Given that the PTV network map has shown each group of lines in a different colour since 2017, why do the screens at Flinders Street Station persist with living in the monochrome past?

Fixing the problem

Turns out Transport for Victoria asked the same question in 2017 and set to work finding a better way, lead by senior user experience designer Carolina Gaitan.

They defined the problem in terms of user experience.

Then came up with a way to test out their hypothesis.

Spending three days sending people through a mock up railway station.

First navigating using the current monochrome design, then a new design where each railway line was a separate colour.

And the result – navigating the station was was easier with colour.

What else did they find?

An important part of the new design was realising that there two groups of users of Flinders Street Station: people unfamiliar with the station, and those who use it every day.

Some signage is tailored for people trying to find their way somewhere new.

While others deliver ‘how long until the next train to X’ information to regular users.

So what next?

Turns out what was learnt through user experience testing is being put into practice, with a wayfinding upgrade coming soon:

Flinders Street Station will be the first station across the metropolitan network to feature signage and information screens where each line has its own colour for easier navigation.

Though I take offence to the boastful “first station” claim – until the 1990s the Melbourne train network used a different colour for each group of lines.

As did the next train displays in the City Loop until 2011.

Everything old is new again?

A signage related footnote

Designer Shane Bradbury explains the new style of regulatory signage as well the suite of maps that appear around Flinders Street Station.

Further reading

You can find a summary of work at the UX Australia 2017 website: ‘Flinders Street Station: A journey to implement UX in wayfinding and customer information‘. The full set of presentation slides is also available.

Alexandra Almond has also published an article on the design process, titled Improving wayfinding at Melbourne’s busiest train station.

Meld Studios has also covered their role in the redesign of both the ‘motherboard’ screens at the station entrance, and the platform screens.

Post retrieved by 37.59.21.100 using Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/30.0.1599.66 Safari/537.36

The post How to find your train at Flinders Street Station appeared first on Waking up in Geelong.

1946

Miss Peace Harber, one of the first women railway employees, changing the indicator clocks at the Degraves Street entrance of Flinders Street Station. (Australian War Memorial image #126587)

2009

Anonymous maintenance contractor adjusts the settings of a misaligned LCD display at Southern Cross.

It seems that even today a long stick is a key part of finding out where your train is.

Post retrieved by 37.59.21.100 using Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/30.0.1599.66 Safari/537.36

The post The more things change… appeared first on Waking up in Geelong.

In the beginning

Way back in the beginning of railways there was no such thing as a central rail control centre – staff at railway stations pulled mechanical levers to direct trains.

Some levers moved the tracks to direct trains where they needed to go, while others operated semaphore signals to tell train drivers whether to stop or go.

The coming of electricity removed the need for as many staff – trains could be automatically detected by the signalling system, with electric motors and coloured light signals taking over from human muscle.

Improvements to electronics made the lever frames themselves redundant, with push button controls allowing remotely located staff to control trains over a widely dispersed network.

PROV image, VPRS 12800/P1, item H 5445

Melbourne moved into this modern age with the opening of the ‘Metrol’ train control facility in the 1980s. Located in a specially built facility on Batman Avenue, the brown brick bunker was for more secure than the timber signal boxes that it replaced.

Flinders Street C signal box with Metrol in background, photo by Weston Langford

When commissioned in 1980, Metrol had three responsibilities:

• operation of the electronic passenger information displays at city stations,
• communications with station staff, signal boxes and train drivers, and
• directing trains through Flinders Street Station, Spencer Street Station and the City Loop.

In the years that followed the scope of control expanded to cover the area bounded by Clifton Hill, East Richmond, Richmond, and South Kensington stations.

Sowing the seeds of failure

In the late 1990s the decision was made to cover over the Jolimont rail yards, requiring the demolition of the original Metrol site to make way for Federation Square. The existing control systems from the 1980s were relocated to a ‘temporary’ site in the Melbourne CBD, pending their replacement by a modern system by June 2001. Originally costed at $11 million, the cost had grown to $18 million by the time the ‘Train Management Facility’ project was abandoned in 2003.

A second attempt at rejuvenating the now aging system was made in 2006, along with building a backup train control facility, when $88 million was made available in the State Government’s ‘Meeting Our Transport Challenges’ package. Completion was due in 2010 but again delays were encountered, with the modern ‘Train Control Management System’ not taking over until late 2014.

And the failures begin

The first failure of note occurred in June 2005, when a leaking air conditioner flooded the control room and forced trains to stop running:

A simple leak in an air-conditioning hose stopped Melbourne’s trains in their tracks yesterday. The evacuation of a flooded control centre halted city services for two hours.

Up to 30,000 metropolitan and country passengers were stranded and 66 trains cancelled during the afternoon crisis. Dozens of trains sat empty at City Loop platforms. Another 21 trains were cancelled after services restarted and delays lasted into the evening peak period.

The chaos began at 11.40am, when water gushed through the hose into the Metrol control centre on Collins Street, from which Connex runs the train network. As the centre was evacuated, trains were ordered to stop at the nearest station and were stranded for two hours.

Mr Hughes said an investigation was under way. “The management of the problem was fine, our emergency response and our shutdown process worked fine,” he said. “But we’ve got to examine what happened and what re-engineering we might do to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

October 2014 saw a different issue shut down the control room.

A false fire alarm briefly shut down Melbourne’s entire train network this morning, resulting in flow-on delays.

Metro Trains said an alarm sounded in the building housing the train control centre in the CBD before 10:00am (AEDT).

Trains were halted for about 15 minutes and resumed when it was determined to be a false alarm.

But June 2015 saw the same issue reoccur.

Melbourne’s train operator Metro has apologised to commuters after the city’s rail service was brought to a standstill by a false alarm in the control centre during the morning peak period.

There were delays of up to 40 minutes across the system this morning after the Flinders Street control centre was evacuated due to an alarm at 8:30am.

About 100 trains were stopped and staff were evacuated.

It was quickly determined it was a false alarm and within 18 minutes trains started running again.

The cause of the issue – another water leak.

Metro’s operations director Ron Bria apologised to Metro commuters but said safety was paramount.

“There was a water leak that made its way into the fire panel which made the alarm go into a default position, evacuating the building,” he said.

Mr Bria said a backup did not kick in because that took 50 minutes but the situation was sorted within 15 minutes.

He said communications with building maintenance was usually made before to check if it was a false alarm but because it was a default system, the entire building was ordered out.

The water leak was not on a Metro floor.

But this time around the backup train control centre was an option.

Public Transport Victoria (PTV) chief executive Mark Wild said they did not switch to the back-up control centre because it was faster to get staff back into the main control centre. following the false alarm.

It takes about 50 minutes to get the back-up control centre up and operational.

“When you know it’s going to be a relatively minor delay due to a false alarm, which we were pretty sure this was, it’s best just to re-populate the existing centre and get the system going again, rather than starting up the back-up centre,” Mr Wild said.

“I think Metro are always in that difficult thing about whether they start up the permanent back-up centre or just wait to go back in.”

He said he thought Metro had made the right call by waiting to go back into the existing centre.

History never repeats? Another false alarm caused the November 2016 outage.

Metro Trains say they are “very sorry” after a false alarm brought down Melbourne’s entire train system last night.

The alarm caused the Metro Trains control centre to be evacuated, causing all trains to grind to a halt. The blame was laid on a power fault.

Metro Trains managing director Andrew Lezala said a power fault caused the alarm to activate.

Mr Lezala said that the building’s backup power supply also failed.
“We immediately dispatched a crew then to our other centre,” he told 3AW.

Notice a common theme?

Fixing the problem

When originally built in the 1980s, Melbourne’s train control centre was a bunker that could keep on ticking away despite what the rest of the city threw at it.

Today it is just a room full of computers sitting in an anonymous CBD office block. Sure – backup power supplies allow it to ride out a short power outage, but as soon as a tenant on another floor burns their toast and sets off the fire alarm, it’s everyone out until the all clear is given.

The only solution is to heed the lessons of the past and move Melbourne’s train control centre back into a purpose built secure facility, with redundant systems built in and a management team ready to fix any minor issue before it becomes a major one.

Footnote

While I was writing this post many others came to the same conclusion – Rail meltdown ignites calls to move network control centre to secure location from The Age.

Post retrieved by 37.59.21.100 using Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/30.0.1599.66 Safari/537.36

The post Why is Melbourne’s rail control centre so vulnerable? appeared first on Waking up in Geelong.

On arriving in the waiting room I found a summary board listing the next three departures in each direction.

When walking along the footbridge towards the platforms, each platform had the next three departures listed, including stopping patterns.

While down on the platform, the stopping pattern of the next train was again displayed, as well as the following three trains.

Now compare Wyndham Vale with your average station on the “suburban” network – lucky stations get a single LED matrix display per platform that displays the time until the next train, with the stopping pattern scrolling along the bottom line.

While everybody else gets stuck with the hopeless “talking bricks”.

V/Line might be in denial about their status as a suburban rail operator, but whoever specified their new real time train information system knew what they were doing.

Footnote

On second thoughts, the main reason that V/Line’s new passenger information screens are “good” is because the systems in suburban Melbourne are so woefully inadequate. Over at V/Line the hardware itself looks fine, as is the information provided to passengers, but the layout and display of the data could be much improved – larger fonts and the use of colour would make a world of difference.

Post retrieved by 37.59.21.100 using Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/30.0.1599.66 Safari/537.36

The post V/Line stations trumps Metro for passenger information appeared first on Waking up in Geelong.

In December 2015 I thought that that V/Line was planning to fix this omission, when a sign reading ‘Ballarat / [blanked out] / Geelong Platform 4’ appeared on the station concourse at Sunshine, with ‘Bendigo’ being hidden beneath the brown sticky tape.

However it was not to be – a few weeks later a new sign appeared, with the mention of ‘Bendigo’ having been removed.

One can dream of the day when a quick change between a Ballarat / Geelong and Bendigo train is possible!

Footnote

At Sunshine station it isn’t uncommon for V/Line to dominate the list of next train departures, with their services outnumbering those provided by Metro Trains.

These trains being:

• V/Line: 3 trains an hour to Geelong, and 2 trains an hour to Bacchus Marsh, with every second train continuing to Ballarat.
• Metro Trains: 3 trains an hour to Watergardens, with every second train continuing to Sunbury.

Makes the 20 minute off peak service on the Sunbury line look like a joke, doesn’t it?

Post retrieved by 37.59.21.100 using Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/30.0.1599.66 Safari/537.36

The post Bendigo trains and Sunshine station appeared first on Waking up in Geelong.

The new bus network was up and working, including the new double decker bus for the route 190 service that links Wyndham Vale station with suburban trains at Werribee station.

But there were also plenty of opening day glitches. The first thing I noticed was that none of the next train displays were working – they were either showing inaccurate data, or the default ‘Listen for announcements’ message.

Platform length is also a problem at the new stations. V/Line is currently only operating trains up to a maximum of six carriages long on the line, but Footscray, Tarneit and Wyndham Vale are all setup for nine carriage long trains.

Painted markings indicating where train drivers should stop, but they appear to be used inconsistently – some trains pulled up to the departure end of the platform, while others stop near the platform entrance. Combine that with the lack of information is given to waiting passengers, and dwell times blow out, as waiting passengers run down the platform to meet the train.

Finally, today was the first time that many commuters from Wyndham Vale and Tarneit had ever stepped onboard a V/Line service, so there was some confusion as to how to open the train doors!

A few more points:

• I travelled on a citybound service that commenced at Wyndham Vale, and it was almost empty, while elsewhere there was reports of Geelong services becoming overcrowded once they reached the new stations.
• V/Line now has nobody to blame for themselves for en-route delays, yet my citybound train got held outside the junction at Sunshine, presumably for another V/Line service, and then crawled into the city, arriving 5 minutes late at Southern Cross.

The glitches with the next train displays are hopefully just an opening day bug, as do passengers not knowing how to open the doors. I’m also hoping that once passengers from Wyndham Vale and Tarneit get used to the new service, they will discover that the dedicated short working services are their best bet for getting a seat, reducing crowding on the Geelong services.

However, the inconsistent stopping locations at platforms is something that V/Line needs to address – the Chief Investigator of Transport Safety flagged it as an issue following a ‘signal passed at danger’ event in 2011.

So to summarise – I’m glad to see a new rail line built to serve a growing area of Melbourne, but V/Line and PTV really need to pull their finger out and make sure the public get the most out of the new infrastructure.

Some timetable quirks

Under the new timetables, for much of the day Metro Trains services to Sunshine station are now outnumbered by those provided by V/Line!

• V/Line: 3 trains an hour to Geelong, and 2 trains an hour to Bacchus Marsh, with every second train continuing to Ballarat.
• Metro Trains: 3 trains an hour to Watergardens, with every second train continuing to Sunbury.

In addition, services to Geelong in peak hour now outnumber those on the ‘suburban’ line to Upfield, which only receives a train every 20 minutes.

Post retrieved by 37.59.21.100 using Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/30.0.1599.66 Safari/537.36

The post First weekday for Regional Rail Link appeared first on Waking up in Geelong.

However some people are having trouble moving on, as can be seen in Google Maps – the public transport layer still includes route 24.

The current inability to use Google Transit in Melbourne is well known, but as for the reason why the tram route is still shown, we need to dig into how Google displays public transport information in their maps.

The first version of Google Transit went live in 2005, but it took until 2007 for it to be rolled into Google Maps. A second enhancement came in 2009, when the ability to display a ‘Transit Layer’ on a map was added.

Google had the following to say when it was released:

Whereas the main Google Transit product has the goal to provide full schedule information and routing, the objective of the Transit Layer is to overlay lines visually on Google Maps. Think of a virtual metro map on top of Google Maps — even when we don’t have itinerary planning available, we want you to be able to see public transit options that are available. Our goal is to be able to offer transit information as an alternative to driving directions wherever possible.

Melbourne’s tram routes are an example of this ‘transit layer’ only mode, which is why Yarra Trams is the only Melbourne public transport operator that appears on Google Transit’s list of cities covered. It also means that the route 24 bug is caused by Yarra Trams – they need to send an updated transit layer file to Google.

Footnote

This list compiled by Hugh Waldron details the history of ‘route 24’:

Allocated from 25/9/1972, previously this route showed Route 48 when travelling from La Trobe Street.

Was extended from La Trobe and Spencer Streets to Flinders Street West via Docklands from 23/5/2005 to 18/11/2005.

Post retrieved by 37.59.21.100 using Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/30.0.1599.66 Safari/537.36

The post Gone but not forgotten – the route 24 tram appeared first on Waking up in Geelong.