The exits/entrances to Collins Street and to Swanston Street (including the underground connection to Flinders Street Station) are in use, but the exit to Federation Square is yet to be opened.

At platform level, it’s fenced off, though sometimes when I pass by, I’ve noticed the escalators are running. Testing perhaps?

At street level in Federation Square itself, until quite recently, there was a lot of fencing surrounding the exit. Screens could be seen showing train information, as well as the possibly misleading (in this context) display proclaiming “Station open”.

Just in the last week or so most of the fencing has come down, and on Sunday I was passing and they were testing the emergency alarms.

It’ll be very handy to be able to exit straight to Fed Square, to the attractions there, to the river, to destinations down St Kilda Road, as well as for those choosing to walk to the Tennis Centre, MCG or the rest of the sporting precinct.

This may help some of those people from the Sunbury/Cranbourne/Pakenham lines reach events without having to change trains. In nice weather it’s a pleasant walk.

Some people may also prefer to use it for changing trains to/from Flinders Street, rather than via the underground connection – though it won’t be so useful for just crossing Swanston Street undercover – it’s a very long walk down to platform level then up again.

Hopefully the weekend’s activity is a sign that the new exit about to open.

There’s been significant investment to make this happen, and it’s good – but what about other major stations? It’s worth considering other locations where interchange and entrance/exit could be quicker. Caulfield is a prime example that needs infrastructure upgrades.

The other priority should be making use of mostly unused exits that are already available. Which brings us to Richmond station. It’s got four exits:

• Exit 1, south east to Swan Street
• Exit 2, north east to Stewart Street
• Exit 3, north west to Barassi Way formerly Brunton Avenue (MCG)
• Exit 4, south west to Olympic Boulevard, Tennis Centre, AAMI Park

Until recently only Exit 1 was open full time. Pressure from locals resulted in Exit 2 opening full time earlier this year.

The others remain closed except for special events, but the definition for “special” is elusive, and seems to exclude many events nearby, for instance they were open for the Melbourne Marathon itself, but closed for the lead-up expo and bib pick-up days.

When these exits are open, they’re often unstaffed, so the cost is effectively zero, though for a moderate investment they could probably upgrade the CCTV so staff at the other end of the station can see what’s going on, or even install intercoms for people needing help (safety, directions, ticketing).

The Fed Square exit from Town Hall Station will be great to have completed. Elsewhere there are opportunities that for minimal cost will help improve the travel experience and save people time.

Update: 28/10/2026: Media is reporting that the Fed Square exit will open on Thursday. Government press release is here, and additional links in comments below.

Victoria was behind most of the rest of Australia in getting Tap And Go/Contactless bank card payments on public transport – though we were about in the middle of the pack worldwide.

We jumped ahead of most other Australian jurisdictions by getting concessions working with Tap and Go earlier this month.

In Australia, only Sydney and Canberra were ahead of us on this, and it’s relatively rare to have this capability internationally.

Just when our ticketing system had caught up with systems in other cities, then Labor made an election promise of a $30 weekly cap… but only for Myki card users.

A weekly cap is a very good idea, but politically this is not a good look.

Until now there’s been fare parity for Tap And Go vs Myki users for 2-hour and daily fares. Charging the same is what you want to encourage more usage of public transport. New and occasional public transport users who don’t want to mess with Myki will likely prefer Tap And Go, but they also don’t want to pay more than necessary.

(Perth charges more for all Tap And Go fares; I’m not sure I understand why.)

Assuming Labour is re-elected in November, the $30 weekly cap would eventually reach Tap and Go users too. As I understand it’s linked to the planned change to Account-Based Ticketing, which moves more functionality onto the back end systems, and provides better capability to adjust fares for things like off-peak discounts and additional caps.

It’s interesting that Myki cards are capable of a weekly cap but Tap and Go currently isn’t, but both offer a daily cap. Possibly this is due to Myki having originally included a weekly cap that was never turned on.

The idea of an automatic weekly cap is a very good one. It means people using the system 5+ days a week are not disadvantaged because they did not preload a Weekly Pass – this is a process that is confusing for passengers, and unnecessarily time-consuming.

The weekly cap is also good for people on limited incomes who don’t necessarily want to pay upfront for a pass.

$30 is a pretty big discount compared to the normal weekly fare – $57 for 5 days of travel or a Weekly Pass. But that’s partly because our Weekly Pass is expensive.

The discount brings it down to the cost of 2.6 weekday daily fares, the same as in Paris and Sydney (daily pass/cap vs weekly), though the prices are higher in both those cities. Some other cities have weekly caps which are a bit higher in proportion to daily fares.

The weekly cap plan does nothing for the high cost of short distance fares. But it would help encourage regular users, and is a good idea.

What happens will depend on the election result. But hopefully whoever gets into government will implement a weekly cap for all users as soon as possible.

The Girl On The Train, on the train.

Ads on windows thwart visibility… kind of ironic given a plot point of the movie advertised above is witnessing events through a train window. Government eventually banned them on Metro, but they’re an ongoing problem for trams and buses – and V/Line.

Remember desk calendars, back before phones took over everything? We had this one with Doctor Who quotes; I managed to get an appropriate picture with this particular quote.

At Caulfield station they were building extra shelter on the ramps to/from platform 4.

Something I noticed one day at the pack of the Exhibition Buildings – tyre spikes at the car park exit. I wonder how often they trigger.

Why don’t cyclists use the bike lane? Often there’s a good reason.

Remember these old school pedestrian beg buttons, before the PB/5 buttons all took over? (Even in 2016, there were not many of these still around, which is why I took the photo. Alas I can’t remember where it was; my HTC phone of the time didn’t GPS stamp it.)

Masters Home Improvement started in 2011 to try and take on Bunnings, but by 2016 was shutting down. This one in South Oakleigh eventually became a Bunnings.

We took a ride on the restaurant tram – alas by 2018 it had shut down, and has never returned. Glad we got to enjoy it while it was running.

On the Dandenong line, level crossing removals were just getting started, with early works shown here at Noble Park:

Clayton:

…and Murrumbeena – note the overhead power stanchions, designed to accommodate the skyrail structure to be built above while trains keep running. Clever.

Nearby in Murrumbeena was this information shopfront for locals to get more information.

Meanwhile in my neck of the woods, the crossing removals were nearing completion, with the temporarily removed palm trees returning.

The Passenger Information Displays were also in flux. One night I noticed they were showing both 24 and 12 hour time – fixed soon after. I’d personally be comfortable if they used 24 hour time permanently like V/Line, but I wonder if it would confuse some people, at least at first.

Possibly related to the crossing removal project: a Vicroads “pavement strength evaluation” vehicle spotted in Bentleigh.

Nearby in Ormond, possibly as part of the same project, someone had placed signage directly contradicting road rule 72, which requires vehicles to give way to pedestrians when turning into a street.

Meanwhile, some real estate agents aren’t content to block the footpath with just their flags (illegal under council bylaws, but still common practice) – they want to leave signs to make absolutely sure you can’t get past easily. Using a pram or wheelchair/mobility device? Bad luck!

The course closes off all of St Kilda Road (from the City to the Junction) to traffic, and much of it to trams.

Here’s the map. I’ve cropped it to just the inner-city portion; the full marathon extends down Marine Parade and St Kilda Street to Brighton. Full map here.

As you can see from the map, much of St Kilda Road was disrupted; no trams ran between Flinders Street and Anzac station.

Making the most of the metro

The 2026 event was the first marathon since the Metro tunnel opened, and they made the most of it. Rather than muck about with tram replacement buses, they ran extra trains through the Metro tunnel instead, and opened Anzac station from 4am.

The full marathon started at 6:15am, making early services important. The half marathon didn’t start until 9:45am, meaning plenty of people coming in later.

Extra ran trains on most lines, on top of the usual hourly all-night service before 7am.

Thankfully all the lines that until recently had 40 minute frequencies on Sunday mornings until 10am have now been upgraded to 20 minutes.

The really good bit was they boosted Metro tunnel train services to run about every 10 minutes from 4am to 7am, then about every 5 minutes until 1pm.

All of this added up to an event that was far easier to get to and get around than previous years.

It’s a stark contrast to just 15 years ago. In 2011 the PTUA noted that the 2010 travel advice for the Melbourne Marathon had been: “public transport is not an option” – because at the time, the first Sunday morning trains didn’t arrive in the city until 8am, and when they did, they only ran every 30-40 minutes.

Not only has that advice changed (“We highly suggest that all competitors take public transport on the day”), but the event is bigger than ever – enabled by much better public transport provision.

You simply couldn’t do this if everybody drove to it. We can track how the event has grown by just looking at the data for how people many finished the full marathon.

This year, apart from about 17,672 people who ran the full marathon, there were also about 13,000 in the half marathon (and more people in other events on Saturday, a total of about 60,000 participants), and many thousands more turned up to cheer them on.

This was not the only major event in central Melbourne over the weekend. The PAX gaming festival was on too, as well as several big concerts.

I’ve written before about how big events pave the way for permanent public transport improvements.

Wandering around on Sunday, tapping my phone at fare gates, hopping on and off Metro tunnel trains running every 5 minutes, gave a hint of Melbourne public transport as it could be: simple to use, frequent service, minimum waiting, easy to get where you’re going.

Honestly it reminded me of being in Europe a year ago.

As a bonus, Anzac station’s underpass provided a way to cross the marathon route without disrupting the runners.

Not everything was perfect.

Some trains on lines with a base 20 minute service seemed overcrowded (as well as forcing longer waits), and at least some Sandringham trains weren’t running through to the city’s west as advertised.

And there still seems to be an unwillingness to open the Richmond station exits for lesser (but still busy) events such as the pre-marathon expo on Friday.

But it was great to see plenty of people in and watching the event, and using public transport to get there.

Compared to “public transport is not an option”, this is definitely progress.

Tap And Go (bank card payment, aka contactless) was publicly trialled from March 2026, then there was a staggered roll out for all full fare users from June. It currently covers all metropolitan services, and all V/Line trains except for Albury, Benalla and Euroa – due to ongoing infrastructure works.

The other thing missing is country town buses outside the Myki network, and V/Line coaches.

I had presumed concessions would not be available until at least next year, especially after the Auditor General report highlighted the risk of costs and delays for an all-singing, all-dancing concession entitlement platform linked into it.

What’s emerged today is a simpler concession implementation.

How does it work?

For concession passengers wanting Tap And Go, you’ll need to:

1. Choose your card or device, and make a Tap And Go trip
2. Go to the portal, and enter the credit card number details you used, and link this to a concession entitlement.

That’s it. The fare for that first trip will be adjusted to the concession price (automatically if you do these steps on the same day, or you can request a refund if it’s later).

After that, travel using that card or device will be charged at the concession fare.

Entitlement still has to be proven during a ticket inspection – the same as with concession Myki cards now.

Why the two step process? Because for security, the systems involved avoid using and storing the real bank account number where possible. There’s some tokenisation going on. So you need to register a transaction, then tell the Myki system that you’re eligible for a concession.

It’s also why if when travelling you swap between your cards/phone/watch, they don’t count as being from one account. The tokens are different.

I am told you can link multiple cards/devices to a concession entitlement, but you would still want to stick to one device on any one day to get the daily cap, and to avoid issues where a Tap On and a Tap Off are treated as two Tap Ons (with two default fares).

All of this is quite different from the NSW Opal system, where set up concession for Tap And Go requires setting up an online account, and entering all the details of your entitlement. You also have to choose whether to always use an Opal Card or always use a card or device. You can’t switch on different days.

So this new Vic system seems simpler to use, if a little less sophisticated overall.

It’s good for more people to have the option of Tap And Go.

I am told a lot of full fare people have switched from Myki cards to Tap And Go; around a third. I’m one of those people… because it’s easier.

So if you use a concession, and you want to use Tap And Go, you can do so from Tuesday!

Update: More info online here