*/

Finally, almost a year after Smartbus routes started serving Lonsdale Street, the automated departure displays have started being switched-on at outbound CBD stops.

This is good news, but it’s exposed other problems with the displays: this one for example, at the busy stop between Queen and Elizabeth Streets.

The sign is too far from the front of the stop — which makes it difficult to read at a distance, where most passengers wait. But even worse, it is obscured by numerous other signs, making it almost unusable.

Help our campaign for better public transport. Join the PTUA now. We rely entirely on member funding and enthusiastic volunteers to operate.

More about PT Problem Of The Day, including how you can contribute your photos.

Turns out it’s not just the privately-run Southern Cross Station where they’re lax about updating the railway network maps.

This map at Flagstaff station, run by Metro, also fails to include Coolaroo, which has now been open for over a year. It should be between Broadmeadows and Roxburgh Park.

(To their credit, Southern Cross Station updated their maps after we highlighted it in June.)

Are you unhappy with public transport? Use our online tool to write to your local MP and demand action.

More about PT Problem Of The Day, including how you can contribute your photos.

As the rail network gets busier, it’s important that stations be designed to assist the efficient flow of people.

The current design of some railway station exits, and the placement of Myki readers simply doesn’t make sense.

1. Armadale station — this reader is well out of the way, a long distance from where passengers enter the paid area.

2. Murrumbeena station — one reader has been placed almost in the middle of the left-hand side of the exit, leading passengers to squeeze past it at busy times.

3. Bentleigh station — this platform is not commonly used, but when it is, there is a bottleneck to exit, made worse by some passengers having to touch-off their Myki cards.

PTUA members: check your copy of the July 2011 newsletter to read about the government’s new Station User Panel, and how you can pass your feedback to the PTUA’s representative on the panel.

More about PT Problem Of The Day, including how you can contribute your photos.

One genuinely worthwhile upgrade in recent years has been the Metlink provision of stop-specific timetables at every train, tram and bus stop across Melbourne.

But Nightrider stops missed out. Instead, stops display times from the start of the route, and ask you to “use the route map to calculate approximate time” — as if timetables aren’t difficult enough to read in the middle of the night.

Metlink do have the stop times in their database — they’re on the web site. But if you can’t access the web site on your phone, and you can’t do the maths to figure it out, and obviously you can’t ring them up to ask (the call centre closes at midnight), then you’ll just have to wait in the dark for your bus — and hope you haven’t missed the last one.

Are you unhappy with public transport? Use our online tool to write to your local MP and demand action.

More about PT Problem Of The Day, including how you can contribute your photos.