r/VlineVictoria

Hi everyone. I’m planning a trip to Australia for next year, traveling the Melbourne–Sydney route. My plan was to see the koalas at Kennet River and the Twelve Apostles, and maybe visit the outback a bit further inland. I came across information about "V/Line" and how you pay very little for transport across the entire state. Is this true, and does it apply to tourists as well? How does it work? Can I reach these places that way, or do I need to rent a car? I’d never heard of this before and find it hard to believe, given how expensive Australia is. Please let me know! 😃

There was a post a week ago on this subreddit asking why they don't reopen passenger services to Mildura, with the consensus being there was not great enough population for it.

However, Queensland runs the Inlander to Mt Isa, a town significantly smaller than Mildura, with only one decent sized town on the way (Charters Towers).

So if Queensland can run the Inlander, why can't Victoria run a V/Line to Mildura?

3 cars in peak hour is cruel. Why the hell would you take 3 cars off at 5 pm. heading out the southern cross. It felt like my knees would dislocate the whole trip.

After a few months out of work, I am about to return to the daily commute (and no doubt will start to reconsider my decision to decline the offer for a Geelong based job…) and am curious if the new station has made any difference at all for Geelong commuters? Like do the trains skip one of them and have half of those passengers compared to before? Or is it still just as bad?

Also very concerned about the number of delay and cancellation notifications I’ve been seeing recently - I definitely haven’t missed having to deal with those. 😩

[supprimé]

I have created an animation of all VLine revenue services using Claude AI.

It gives an interesting perspective of what trains are running on the network at any given time.

Zoom in and click on a service to follow it.

Zoom out and see the network as a whole.

https://docstash.ai/d33dc3

https://preview.redd.it/ehsd3qm92yth1.png?width=1917&format=png&auto=webp&s=80fb92e688daed57dbb06d67d06c214b208161ab

Has anyone else noticed an influx of authorised officers on Geelong Vline trains? I have been regularly commuting on the same services for ages and have recently noticed that groups of AOs will be present on the service, often checking mykis at the same time as a Vline staff member. The Vline staff have almost always done this on their own in my experience and are so understanding when something has gone wrong for someone, often tapping on their myki for them if they forgot. My experience of AOs has been almost universally negative, they use intimidation to try and get people to behave which makes so many people feel unsafe.

Today a woman had a fully topped up and valid myki and said she thought she had tapped on correctly but the reader seemingly said she hadn't, and instead of just tapping her on the AO sat down across from her and essentially leaned over her, going on about how it is an offence in a very aggressive tone. He was using the same machine as the Vline staff do, and didn't even MENTION the fact that he could tap her on to fix the mistake. The Vline staff member then came down the aisle and quickly tapped her on after witnessing the conversation.

Anyway, I don't really know what result I am looking for other than to find out if anyone else has noticed this. I'm not a fan.