Not too many people work in the week between Christmas and New Year, so many cities drop their public transport service frequency. In a particularly extreme example, Sydney’s CityRail is running on a Saturday timetable all week, but it isn’t dropping its fares to match. Is that reasonable? More »
After testing 3G broadband on the Melbourne-Sydney train trip last year and finding it somewhat wanting, I had no intention of repeating the experience. However, this week’s Qantas shenanigans meant that a train looked like the best way to get back to Sydney after a weekend trip, and I figured I’d use the time to see if Telstra’s 4G rollout made much difference. The result was mostly not pretty. More »
Vodafone recently issued a press release saying that its network improvement program has made major improvements in the Central Coast and Newcastle area. However, when Road Worrier ran its own tests in that area over the weekend, the results were less than impressive for anywhere north of Gosford. More »
The concept of some sort of very fast train (VFT) service connecting major cities is endlessly discussed in Australia, but nothing ever seems to happen. Why can’t we get this concept moving? More »
I’ve already tested how 3G broadband works between on trains Melbourne and Sydney and Sydney and Brisbane. So it was inevitable that I’d have to try a similar trick travelling between Melbourne and Adelaide. Here’s what I learnt. More »
Many train services incorporate a “quiet carriage” where mobile phones are discouraged and noise is supposed to be kept to a minimum. But do travellers really pay attention to those rules? More »
Not many people would deliberately devote four days to train travel in order to work out just how good Next G broadband coverage is, but it does provide some unusual insights into when 3G broadband services are useful (and when they aren’t). Here’s the five key lessons I’ve learnt during the Off The Rails project. More »
The Off The Rails experiment has seen some pretty variable results, so it was pleasing to run a test journey from the Brisbane CBD to the Gold Coast and back again and encounter no issues whatsoever. More »
Lifehacker has spent much of the last week travelling on XPT trains, so it seems natural to point out that the Sydney-Melbourne XPT service, which has been effectively non-existent in Victoria because of track maintenance issues, has started running again this week. You won’t necessarily get great mobile signal and it takes a while, but being on a train beats being on a coach hands-down. [Countrylink]
Off The Rails has a pretty clear lessen so far: The further north in NSW you head on a train, the less likely it is that Next G wireless broadband will work effectively. And when it does, the performance is anything but guaranteed. More »
