Tony Sullivan's List: landscape, public infrastructure and urban design

• The heat-related cancellations in Melbourne contrast with Perth's recent experience, in which not a single train was cancelled due to the heat, despite a string of days above 40 degrees.
• "Perth is less affected than other states because the bottom line is we have a better rail network, although it's smaller," Mr Hynes said. "We have concrete sleepers throughout our entire network, whereas Sydney and Melbourne are still mostly wooden sleepers which are more prey to heat."

• A transport engineer with good technical knowledge of Melbourne's system said ageing and inadequate traction power, which powers trains along the lines, was also to blame for chronic delays on hot days. Metro had this week deliberately "thinned out" its timetable in response, he said.

    

  "The equipment that is used in the substations is very old," he said. "There is a progressive upgrade but the equipment gets hot and becomes less reliable and you find that there is less ability for a particular line section to accommodate a certain number of trains."
• Tony Morton, the Public Transport Users Association president, said Metro was less culpable for the cancelled services than successive state governments that had failed to properly maintain and renew the system.

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• Victorians paid more than $2.6 billion last financial year in subsidies to the state's public transport operators, less than a quarter of which made its way back into the public purse through fares.

    

  And the multibillion-dollar bill to taxpayers - already more than $10 billion - is forecast to grow in coming years, defying the predictions of those who spearheaded the system's privatisation 15 years ago.

• In 2012-13, state government authority Public Transport Victoria made more than $1.2 billion in service payments to private operators Metro Trains and Yarra Trams, $935 million to bus companies and $49 million to Asset Co, which manages Southern Cross Station. It also paid $361 million to regional rail and coach operator V/Line, which is a government-owned corporation.

    

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  Just $589.8 million of the total service payments bill - 22.2 per cent - was recovered through paid fares, a level considered well below international best practice.
• Australia's five biggest cities average 36 per cent cost recovery
• Another 2012 report called State of Australian Cities, released by the federal government in December, observed that Australia's low farebox revenues threatened to hold the country back from proceeding with key major infrastructure projects. ''Fare recovery in Australian urban mass transit systems is already well below international best practice and continues to decline,'' the report said.

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• The Transport Department and its successor, Public Transport Victoria, were never interested in the Coalition's vision of new suburban rail extensions because they had already looked at these projects years ago and found reasons not to go ahead with them. Evidently they won the argument behind closed doors, because the government has rushed to release its reports, as if to purge itself of the embarrassing baggage of its pre-election optimism.
• The Transport Department and its successor, Public Transport Victoria, were never interested in the Coalition's vision of new suburban rail extensions because they had already looked at these projects years ago and found reasons not to go ahead with them. Evidently they won the argument behind closed doors, because the government has rushed to release its reports, as if to purge itself of the embarrassing baggage of its pre-election optimism.
• The Transport Department and its successor, Public Transport Victoria, were never interested in the Coalition's vision of new suburban rail extensions because they had already looked at these projects years ago and found reasons not to go ahead with them. Evidently they won the argument behind closed doors, because the government has rushed to release its reports, as if to purge itself of the embarrassing baggage of its pre-election optimism.
• Released on Thursday, the Doncaster rail draft report appears so expensively elaborate it is as if it were designed to fail.

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