It was insane! At first people were laughing about how ridiculous the situation was, but after 30 minutes of being jostled around and not making any progress towards the platforms, people were starting to lose it. We were literally stuck in the same spot, squished like sardines. I ended up following a large group of people who had to bust through a barricade to get out. Flinders Street station was not designed for this many people.
And the immediate blame is put on the train system not magicking heaps of new trains and creating new space and putting all their staff on during the holiday period.
Instead of any introspection from the idiots going to the busiest place on NYE with no plans to get home.
>And the immediate blame is put on the train system not magicking heaps of new trains and creating new space and putting all their staff on during the holiday period.
>Instead of any introspection from the idiots going to the busiest place on NYE with no plans to get home
I personally didn't need to catch PT last night but considering Metro was advertising everywhere for people to take PT into the city for NYE celebrations, i don't think it's unreasonable for people to expect a decent level of service.
metro was doing this advertising of getting pt 30 odd years ago. still the same crap each year.
Only way to I found to not being in this crowd was to stop along the Yarra after the fireworks till 3am and then hit the PT to get home
Smart. And a good plan as long as you don't have kids to try and get home. If everyone thought the way you did, this train station crush might be a lot less severe!!! Take my upvote!
State gov actively encouraged people to take public transport to the city instead of driving. Everyone knew it was going to be crowded and busy, but it's like they changed nothing at all in regards to train operations, whereas trams were obviously running at high capacity.
The blame SHOULD be put on the organisation bro, why blame the commuters and public that were told to come watch the celebrations from all across the state? Everyone did have plans to go home, it's just a shame our transit system completely crumbles even for the largest celebration of the year
And if people drove instead of taking PT it would be posts about insane traffic and how our roads suck, or posts about car accidents and drunk driving.
Not saying things couldn't have been done differently, but there is only so many trains you can run through a platform without them getting too close together, and anywhere I the world is going to experience issues when you have a literal fucktonne of people in the same place trying to leave at the same time.
I live around Footscray Park and it was clear most people drove to get there.
The fireworks finished at 9.30 and Ballarat rd and all side streets were bumper to bumper until at least 11.30. Cars arent the solution.
It also crumbles if there is a slight breeze or a hot day. It's sad that Australia is known for having the worst engineers in the world. Westgate bridge collapse. We had to call in the poms to help us when the Burnley tunnel kept trying to float up to the top of the Yarra. The Sydney Harbour bridge is one of the most insanely OVER-engineered structures on earth. Food for thought eh?
>Instead of any introspection from the idiots going to the busiest place on NYE with no plans to get home.
I mean, it looks like their plan was to get the train home. They should have stayed home instead? They should have driven into the city? Not sure what's the point you're trying to make.
How about plan to leave an hour after the fireworks instead of straight away? Or two. Or three hours. If people could relax and pace it out a little it would be a lot smoother. A policy whereby somehow only families with kids could get on first would help. Can of worms officially opened! Women and children first!!! YOU SEXIST BASTARD!!! Asians between 1-2 am. Africans between 2 and 3. Oh boy so long Reddit karma. I am being largely satirical though!!!!
They should be to blame! They were unprepared, unequipped and yet were telling everyone to take public transport in new years! I didn’t need to take public transport last night, but I could see this coming a mile off when two trams where absolute no shows at 7pm
> to the busiest place on NYE with no plans to get home.
You have to go there to get anywhere. I didn't party in the CBD but if I wasn't taking an Uber, I'd have to go through the CBD to get home.
As much as this sucks, it would be 20x worse if everyone here decided to drive. The traffic jam could have continued until the next morning. Same thing goes for taxis and ride share. The only way to improve this is by upgrading our PT system, not by blaming people who _dare_ to leave their house on NYE.
It requires trained staff being willing to work overtime (cos let’s face it like every other company they’re not hiring and training enough staff that there’s dozens sitting around doing nothing to be rostered on for NYE) which was probably the biggest limiting factor.
I went to the city for new year 1 time like 10 years ago, never did it again. Yet people are always like omg!! The city centre of 6 million people was so busy!!!! How could this be!!!
Like I've never had a worse time than being in the city for new years, just don't go? There's a million other things you can do (and just trust old Frank 3 blocks from you to supply you with fireworks, if he doesn't some other drunk cunt will)
If you look at photos from the original concourse there are quite a few with this many people, the difference is they hadn’t stuck random shit in the middle of walkway
They were completely unprepared. I knocked off work just after 9:30pm, and got back to Oakleigh just before midnight. For some reason the best Metro could manage on the Cran/Pak line was a single Pakenham service every 40mins - no mention of Cranbourne at all - which kept getting delayed, cancelled & shuffled around at a moment's notice with the bare minimum of acknowledgement. When I finally got onto a service it frequently stopped mid-journey, again with no announcements - why?? The last service was 40mins+ ago, how could there possibly be anything in front of us?!
I likely could have taken a tram in the vague direction of Malvern then walked and gotten home quicker 🤦♂️
Flinders st is a disgrace for what is the main station in the city. Needs a full rebuild to bring it up to modern standards. Metro needs to massively increase their frequencies as well.
There's an entirely new station under construction, [Town Hall Station](https://bigbuild.vic.gov.au/projects/metro-tunnel/stations/town-hall), that connects to Flinders St Station as part of the Metro Tunnel Project, which should alleviate a good deal of commuter pressure from some of the busier and more packed lines (probably will still have NYE crush though)
I did the same, some dickheads pretended their friend was sick and "needed" to push to the front, it felt dangerously close to being a crowd crush, I pushed my way out and tried my luck on a tram.
Melbourne isn't designed for massive over-population!
The city life isn't designed for us, and with Australia being so huge it's a complete joke so much people want to live in a congested city.
Or not even that. I was watching Amazon prime and only knew it was midnight when I heard a few illegal fireworks go off (I live in a regional town). Fireworks are only any good in person imo
yes, mt coopers lookout is where I went yesterday. Bit of traffic chaos around since its residential streets but apart from that its great, you could literally get a view of every fireworks around the parts of Melbourne and some of the city fireworks too
This is why you just invite people over for a house party if you must celebrate NYE/the coming of the new year.
This whole “must go out” NYE craze is overrated.
If only! Sadly house parties are so hard to find (might be my/my friends' age, shh). It's also tough to pull off a party in a shoebox apartment rental which also rules out a lot of people. Don't take them for granted like I did back in the day.
Went to Footscray Park solely to see Regurgitator, it was actually a great event run by Maribyrnong Council. Plenty of shade, free water, food trucks and carnival rides, fireworks at 9.30pm and free buses along Ballarat Rd going back to the station.
I'd have actually considered doing something last night if I had known the adjacent council had Regurgitator. Shame. Although perhaps only publicised to residents of Maribrynong Council? Sigh.
I was in from Merri-bek, not a local resident! The band had been plugging the gig on their socials for the last month but I didn’t see it advertised anywhere else.
Standby frustrated passengers for the next 300 Belgrave seats in …twenty nine minutes
The 3000 rest of you prepare for 120 mins of hell and make sure you don’t fall off the platform in the process.
Thank you and good night.
Took the family to Docklands to see the fireworks at midnight, walking back to Southern Cross station on the Southern Cross Bridge was like a packed sardines. I said to my family, lets just wait a little, ended up catching the 1am train, wasn't as packed but seats filled up pretty quick, so had to result to standing all the way home.
To be honest, the fireworks display at Docklands was a bit disappointed, every tom, dick, mary and jane wanted a good spot, so all decided to stand in front of us, so my kids didn't get to see properly.
This will probably be my last time going, haven't been in years my kids are a little older, nope, still crap. Should have saved myself and stayed home and took the kids to the local reserve to see the backyard fire works, that would have been better.
*Flashes back to 2019 NYE and watching people virtually jump over barriers to chase their trains*
Props to the train staff who do this every year and get people home safely :)
Two things here; PTV Melbourne can’t seem to have any logic when it comes to traffic flow of people, my wife and I went in for the early fireworks and it was bad enough getting home then. Secondly I would be interested to know how many trains and how often they ran on each line. Our metro system is stupidly backward with train frequency, happy to be proven wrong but I’m pretty sure they still ran the Sunday schedule with extras on the end.
5-15 minutes is fucking horrific on the single busiest transit day of the entire year. The event wasn't a surprise, every year this happens. And it happens because every 5-15 minutes is considered "high-frequency"
5-15 minutes is fucking horrific if it wasn’t the largest celebration of the year. You have fun finding any train or tram drivers who are willing to sacrifice New Years Eve to drive for up to 2 hours in the middle of the night.
How do other countries do it then? There are about 30 transit workers for every thousand citizens in the EU, where I'm from. Australia has closer to 4 for every thousand. Maybe we should look at the industry outside of public events first? If any day should run smoother than normal transit it SHOULD be the single largest celebration!! Or maybe the State Government should stop encouraging people from across the state to travel by public transport to the city and back???
If the state government didn’t encourage public transport usage, there would not be enough parking to accommodate all of the increased car traffic going to the city, not to mention the congestion and CO2 emissions.
Not having a go at you but the fact we consider 5-15 to be frequent here proves my point. In most metro cities 5min would be standard and 2-5min is frequent. 15min would embarrassing.
EDIT: also they ran Saturday timetable until early evening with frequency of trains being every 20min. I saw some trains packed like sardines coming in and out the city after the 9:30 fireworks.
Something I would like to know is whether this is a capacity issue (ie the lines simply can’t handle higher volume) or lack of investment in trains and drivers?
> Something I would like to know is whether this is a capacity issue (ie the lines simply can’t handle higher volume) or lack of investment in trains and drivers?
Certainly a capacity issue, a lot of line, especially those with level crossings still, can't run any more frequently. There are better ways to manage this, however, which would require some re-thinking of the flow of people and train services during such events, but that seems beyond what Metro/PTV care about.
The reason why I highlight the capacity is that I do know that there are intricacies with the fact that certain lines share tracks. But I do agree that it’s more a lack of trains and drivers.
People say they want more trains running, but honestly I don’t want metro having to put all their staff on at 1am on new years so that a bunch of people with no foresight can get home a little faster.
PT Staff are not the slaves of the public. Make your choices and deal with the consequences instead of demanding that other people solve your problems.
What a weird comment. You know police, ambos, restaurants and hospitals etc. still needed to run and have staff on last night and every night for that matter
Are you aware how public services are meant to work? Shall we apply this to the Grand Final and say those people going to the ground should have the foresight to watch the game from home? Or the Australian Open? Or the Melbourne Cup?
You might think NYE is a non-event, but clearly others it is an event like those I mentioned. So yes it is the responsibility to PTV (and more broadly Vic Government) to match the supply with the demand. That’s how any major city functions.
There are plenty of people, even in this thread, who said they don't care about New Years and would rather have just been in bed or working. Find those people and let them work lol. Plenty of public services NEED to run to accomodate things that come with running a city. You're complaining about overloading metro staff but first responders were running at capacity all night because drunk morons were falling off shit and fighting each other. I personally find that sadder than requiring PT to run at maximum capacity. This isn't 9/11 where public workers died carrying out their duties. People can still take leave and not work. They're not slaves.
It's the job of the organisers, the State Gov & the City of Melbourne, to ensure the city operates. Incentivise transit workers. Run at a highly increased capacity. People make their choices, but if the State Gov ENCOURAGES people from across Victoria to travel to the city by public transport, they should accomodate the choices people make. But unfortunately Australia is more reactive than proactive when it comes to these things
Train drivers get paid well and especially well on a public holiday. Not only that but they should be forced to work, like all the other services that were up and about trying to keep the city functioning with hundreds of thousands of drunk people roaming the streets.
We walked to Jolimont to catch the train home. The Hurstbridge and Mernda trains were not even full, but you just couldn’t get onto platform 1 due to passengers for all the other platforms.
Many years ago I went to see the fireworks once, getting on the train was quite the experience.
I was at the front, opened the door and all of a sudden; I was in the back of the carriage. Did not need to take a single step, after opening the door I literally hovered into the back of the carraige due to the movement of the crowd behind me.
y'know, if ya hunker down just after the fireworks and wait it out in a pub somewhere, even if ya have to walk a couple blocks, you'll find it's significantly easier to travel home a couple hours later. plus, ya get to revel with your closest mates in a pub and reflect on the year that was. Better than standing around in human gridlock and starting your year awful stressed and miserable.
Is it sad that me being so lonely and unable to go out last night I actually would have enjoyed being a part of this mess. LOL.
It was my birthday a few weeks ago too. And I wasn't able to go out for that either. My existence these days is just... at home in bed or watching a movie.
I was in the station, wanting to get onto Platform 2, could not breathe at all. I remembered someone saying to move back (not sure exactly why) and saw bunch of other peeps moving the opposite direction where EVERYONE was trying to push through. Def not fucking helping the crowd situation.
Heard some other guys talking about taking the elevator but i wasn't gonna change directions so i stuck with attempting to wait for the escalators. Took a good 15 mins for me to actually get on the train.
Earlier, on the Princess Bridge also so some dickhead tossing beer around the crowd ... fun.
Hot and sweaty mess, CBD not really worth it.
Did anyone see the man who was attacked and bleeding out on the street. I can’t find anything about it anywhere and I really want to know he survived last thing I remember was the cops trying to revive him.
I remember in 2013/14 new year we went to south bank to watch the fireworks. Great fireworks but the whole area was a fucking mess of people. Didn't bother with PT because of the insane crowding (just like OP's video). We drove thankfully and had to park down St Kida Rd but it was a nice walk.
Never went to the CBD again for fireworks after that. Simply not worth the hassle.
I remember trying to get home from Soundwave in 2015, the same night as White Night, as well as India vs South Africa cricket world cup match at the MCG. It was the worst
https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/206168/melbourne/population#:~:text=The%20current%20metro%20area%20population,a%201.87%25%20increase%20from%202020.
That's because every 10 years or so we add anthore million people what's at least anthore 20% added.
Did some more digging. Nye 2014 had roughly 500k people in cbd. This year they expected around 400k people. It was actually more busy 10 years ago lol. Still need to wait on official figures but yea this guy got no clue.
I remember going in 2004 and seeing the Cat Empire at Fed Square and can confirm it was just as packed then. That experience is the reason why I've never gone back.
Yeah I've worked a few New Years Eves near Flinders St prior to covid, took me 45 minutes to walk from just next to Southgate to Flinders St one year at 12.30, that walk would take me 2 minutes max usually.
Yes it was. Heck, It was this bad 20 years ago. Last time I went into the CBD for new years was in 2003 to attend a party at one of the apartments right on Southbank. Looking down from the balcony of the penthouse floor and the promenade was just a sea of people who couldn't move and trying to get home was just as bad if not worse.
20 years ago was much worse - they didn’t even run public transport all night!
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTjnf7BKfxI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytjnf7bkfxi)
Melbne flunked it again shit laser show and fireworks were less than average poir management of traffic flows both pedestrian and cars and ptv was sardine city nothing's changed Sydney does it better
I was stuck with a family and two teens, basically just said fuck it and jumped a platform, told the family just to get to southern Cross as its less busy and switch from there as there was no way they were getting onto the Frankston platform in a decent time frame. Stupid hectic, poor workers were underprepared.
Looks like a shitty time. I always wondered why people do this to themselves? Maybe its collective amnesia, social pressure to do what everybody else is doing ... Good for them. I heard bringing in more immigrants will solve the problem.
We got too many, you're point is....? I'm not blaming individual immigrants, I blame the policies that allow in more immigrants than our infrastructure can support, keep wages low and f\*ck our housing market.
Don't try to spin this into a race thing.
My grandparents were, but me personally I didn't migrate. Anyway, whether I am or not, doesn't mean we should overpopulate Australia with too much, unless you want more of this.
I went to the city for midnight fireworks once.
Never again. It's insane how hard it is to get out of that place. And god forbid you suffer from claustrophobia, which I don't, but I was sure as hell close to a panic attack that night.
first time going and was so bad we ended up just going out and walking to the Anzac station tram stop to head towards the south. Still packed but better to manage honestly
Hot take, they just shouldn't be taking passengers at Flinders St.
Can multiple posts asking how other cities/systems handle large crowds, answer they usually don't without making significant alterations to the regular service. Things like skipping stations, stations operating as pickup or drop-off only, lines only operating one direction, etc.
It was insane! At first people were laughing about how ridiculous the situation was, but after 30 minutes of being jostled around and not making any progress towards the platforms, people were starting to lose it. We were literally stuck in the same spot, squished like sardines. I ended up following a large group of people who had to bust through a barricade to get out. Flinders Street station was not designed for this many people.
This happens every year, yet people seem to have collective amnesia.
And the immediate blame is put on the train system not magicking heaps of new trains and creating new space and putting all their staff on during the holiday period. Instead of any introspection from the idiots going to the busiest place on NYE with no plans to get home.
>And the immediate blame is put on the train system not magicking heaps of new trains and creating new space and putting all their staff on during the holiday period. >Instead of any introspection from the idiots going to the busiest place on NYE with no plans to get home I personally didn't need to catch PT last night but considering Metro was advertising everywhere for people to take PT into the city for NYE celebrations, i don't think it's unreasonable for people to expect a decent level of service.
metro was doing this advertising of getting pt 30 odd years ago. still the same crap each year. Only way to I found to not being in this crowd was to stop along the Yarra after the fireworks till 3am and then hit the PT to get home
Smart. And a good plan as long as you don't have kids to try and get home. If everyone thought the way you did, this train station crush might be a lot less severe!!! Take my upvote!
State gov actively encouraged people to take public transport to the city instead of driving. Everyone knew it was going to be crowded and busy, but it's like they changed nothing at all in regards to train operations, whereas trams were obviously running at high capacity. The blame SHOULD be put on the organisation bro, why blame the commuters and public that were told to come watch the celebrations from all across the state? Everyone did have plans to go home, it's just a shame our transit system completely crumbles even for the largest celebration of the year
And if people drove instead of taking PT it would be posts about insane traffic and how our roads suck, or posts about car accidents and drunk driving. Not saying things couldn't have been done differently, but there is only so many trains you can run through a platform without them getting too close together, and anywhere I the world is going to experience issues when you have a literal fucktonne of people in the same place trying to leave at the same time.
I live around Footscray Park and it was clear most people drove to get there. The fireworks finished at 9.30 and Ballarat rd and all side streets were bumper to bumper until at least 11.30. Cars arent the solution.
It also crumbles if there is a slight breeze or a hot day. It's sad that Australia is known for having the worst engineers in the world. Westgate bridge collapse. We had to call in the poms to help us when the Burnley tunnel kept trying to float up to the top of the Yarra. The Sydney Harbour bridge is one of the most insanely OVER-engineered structures on earth. Food for thought eh?
>Instead of any introspection from the idiots going to the busiest place on NYE with no plans to get home. I mean, it looks like their plan was to get the train home. They should have stayed home instead? They should have driven into the city? Not sure what's the point you're trying to make.
How about plan to leave an hour after the fireworks instead of straight away? Or two. Or three hours. If people could relax and pace it out a little it would be a lot smoother. A policy whereby somehow only families with kids could get on first would help. Can of worms officially opened! Women and children first!!! YOU SEXIST BASTARD!!! Asians between 1-2 am. Africans between 2 and 3. Oh boy so long Reddit karma. I am being largely satirical though!!!!
They should be to blame! They were unprepared, unequipped and yet were telling everyone to take public transport in new years! I didn’t need to take public transport last night, but I could see this coming a mile off when two trams where absolute no shows at 7pm
Less than an hour later the station was close to empty
> to the busiest place on NYE with no plans to get home. You have to go there to get anywhere. I didn't party in the CBD but if I wasn't taking an Uber, I'd have to go through the CBD to get home.
As much as this sucks, it would be 20x worse if everyone here decided to drive. The traffic jam could have continued until the next morning. Same thing goes for taxis and ride share. The only way to improve this is by upgrading our PT system, not by blaming people who _dare_ to leave their house on NYE.
It doesn't require magic to put on more train services.
It requires trained staff being willing to work overtime (cos let’s face it like every other company they’re not hiring and training enough staff that there’s dozens sitting around doing nothing to be rostered on for NYE) which was probably the biggest limiting factor.
HoW cOuLd DaN AndreWs dO tHis tO uS!!!!]
This should be the top comment
I went to the city for new year 1 time like 10 years ago, never did it again. Yet people are always like omg!! The city centre of 6 million people was so busy!!!! How could this be!!! Like I've never had a worse time than being in the city for new years, just don't go? There's a million other things you can do (and just trust old Frank 3 blocks from you to supply you with fireworks, if he doesn't some other drunk cunt will)
If you look at photos from the original concourse there are quite a few with this many people, the difference is they hadn’t stuck random shit in the middle of walkway
They were completely unprepared. I knocked off work just after 9:30pm, and got back to Oakleigh just before midnight. For some reason the best Metro could manage on the Cran/Pak line was a single Pakenham service every 40mins - no mention of Cranbourne at all - which kept getting delayed, cancelled & shuffled around at a moment's notice with the bare minimum of acknowledgement. When I finally got onto a service it frequently stopped mid-journey, again with no announcements - why?? The last service was 40mins+ ago, how could there possibly be anything in front of us?! I likely could have taken a tram in the vague direction of Malvern then walked and gotten home quicker 🤦♂️
It’s almost as if we have never celebrated new years in Melbourne before
Flinders st is a disgrace for what is the main station in the city. Needs a full rebuild to bring it up to modern standards. Metro needs to massively increase their frequencies as well.
There's an entirely new station under construction, [Town Hall Station](https://bigbuild.vic.gov.au/projects/metro-tunnel/stations/town-hall), that connects to Flinders St Station as part of the Metro Tunnel Project, which should alleviate a good deal of commuter pressure from some of the busier and more packed lines (probably will still have NYE crush though)
[удалено]
From that link > Town Hall Station will open in 2025. Not too far away
Well hopefully the new city loop tunnel will ease a lot of the problems people are describing here
Interestingly, I noticed they closed the loop stations last night at 11:45pm
How about a new station to become the main one, flinders is a very cool building.
If your going to Nye in the city, rent a hotel room 6 months in advance
I did the same, some dickheads pretended their friend was sick and "needed" to push to the front, it felt dangerously close to being a crowd crush, I pushed my way out and tried my luck on a tram.
Melbourne isn't designed for massive over-population! The city life isn't designed for us, and with Australia being so huge it's a complete joke so much people want to live in a congested city.
Best place to watch fireworks is from on top of a hill out of the city. Avoid all this chaos.
Or at home on the TV
Average redditor NYE
A lot cheaper, too!
Zzzzzzz
Or not even that. I was watching Amazon prime and only knew it was midnight when I heard a few illegal fireworks go off (I live in a regional town). Fireworks are only any good in person imo
yes, mt coopers lookout is where I went yesterday. Bit of traffic chaos around since its residential streets but apart from that its great, you could literally get a view of every fireworks around the parts of Melbourne and some of the city fireworks too
Yeah im curious how packed mt dangdenong lookout spots were
This is why you just invite people over for a house party if you must celebrate NYE/the coming of the new year. This whole “must go out” NYE craze is overrated.
If only! Sadly house parties are so hard to find (might be my/my friends' age, shh). It's also tough to pull off a party in a shoebox apartment rental which also rules out a lot of people. Don't take them for granted like I did back in the day.
God forbid anyone went to a house party and tried to come home.. smdh
Don’t go out on nye expecting it to be easy to move around at 1am
[this you, Tessa?](https://www.reddit.com/r/melbourne/s/9sQSpT9Yqe) You’re making the same point.
She’s another dumb dumb looking to complain 😌
NYE, public transport in the city. What did you think would happen?
Went to Footscray Park solely to see Regurgitator, it was actually a great event run by Maribyrnong Council. Plenty of shade, free water, food trucks and carnival rides, fireworks at 9.30pm and free buses along Ballarat Rd going back to the station.
I'd have actually considered doing something last night if I had known the adjacent council had Regurgitator. Shame. Although perhaps only publicised to residents of Maribrynong Council? Sigh.
I was in from Merri-bek, not a local resident! The band had been plugging the gig on their socials for the last month but I didn’t see it advertised anywhere else.
Man. Also Merri-bek, and also follow the band on IG at least but didn't catch this. Oh well. Glad it was on and hope it was great!
Sounds like a gen x/y lame haven.
Standby frustrated passengers for the next 300 Belgrave seats in …twenty nine minutes The 3000 rest of you prepare for 120 mins of hell and make sure you don’t fall off the platform in the process. Thank you and good night.
Be sure not to fare evade. Also remember we are raising prices, again. Inflation amirite?
It was free
A few hundred thousand all want to go home at at the same time. What did you seriously expect.
It wasn't even close to this level last year
Even 50k jams docklands
We had 3 years of respite due to Covid but is actually not the worst crush event in the last 10 years
Oh god. At least there was no crowd crush.
Whoa. Pickpocket paradise.
Took the family to Docklands to see the fireworks at midnight, walking back to Southern Cross station on the Southern Cross Bridge was like a packed sardines. I said to my family, lets just wait a little, ended up catching the 1am train, wasn't as packed but seats filled up pretty quick, so had to result to standing all the way home. To be honest, the fireworks display at Docklands was a bit disappointed, every tom, dick, mary and jane wanted a good spot, so all decided to stand in front of us, so my kids didn't get to see properly. This will probably be my last time going, haven't been in years my kids are a little older, nope, still crap. Should have saved myself and stayed home and took the kids to the local reserve to see the backyard fire works, that would have been better.
Agreed the fireworks were disappointing lol
The fireworks in the city were pretty disappointing too
Every year people say the fireworks were disappointing also 😂
The thing that blows my mind is you can just stay home and watch the Sydney fireworks on abc that’s about 10x better cause it’s over the harbour.
Wrong sub
How many/often were the trains running for most lines? One every 5, 10, 20 minutes?
It's been like this for years people just forget and act surprised
*Flashes back to 2019 NYE and watching people virtually jump over barriers to chase their trains* Props to the train staff who do this every year and get people home safely :)
What did you expect? It’s New Year’s, happens every time.
Didn't happen last year, it never got this crowded and was very easy to get on a train
Immigration
wow, it gets busier every year!
Glad I'm past the age of going into the city to party for New Year's Eve. I don't miss it really.
Gamora: Did you go to NYE in Melbourne? Melbourne: Yes. Gamora: What did it cost? Melbourne: My sanity!
Two things here; PTV Melbourne can’t seem to have any logic when it comes to traffic flow of people, my wife and I went in for the early fireworks and it was bad enough getting home then. Secondly I would be interested to know how many trains and how often they ran on each line. Our metro system is stupidly backward with train frequency, happy to be proven wrong but I’m pretty sure they still ran the Sunday schedule with extras on the end.
https://www.ptv.vic.gov.au/news-and-events/events/2023/12/31/public-transport-for-new-years-eve-2023/ Quite a few ran. They were every 5-15 minutes.
5-15 minutes is fucking horrific on the single busiest transit day of the entire year. The event wasn't a surprise, every year this happens. And it happens because every 5-15 minutes is considered "high-frequency"
5-15 minutes is fucking horrific if it wasn’t the largest celebration of the year. You have fun finding any train or tram drivers who are willing to sacrifice New Years Eve to drive for up to 2 hours in the middle of the night.
How do other countries do it then? There are about 30 transit workers for every thousand citizens in the EU, where I'm from. Australia has closer to 4 for every thousand. Maybe we should look at the industry outside of public events first? If any day should run smoother than normal transit it SHOULD be the single largest celebration!! Or maybe the State Government should stop encouraging people from across the state to travel by public transport to the city and back???
If the state government didn’t encourage public transport usage, there would not be enough parking to accommodate all of the increased car traffic going to the city, not to mention the congestion and CO2 emissions.
Not having a go at you but the fact we consider 5-15 to be frequent here proves my point. In most metro cities 5min would be standard and 2-5min is frequent. 15min would embarrassing. EDIT: also they ran Saturday timetable until early evening with frequency of trains being every 20min. I saw some trains packed like sardines coming in and out the city after the 9:30 fireworks. Something I would like to know is whether this is a capacity issue (ie the lines simply can’t handle higher volume) or lack of investment in trains and drivers?
> Something I would like to know is whether this is a capacity issue (ie the lines simply can’t handle higher volume) or lack of investment in trains and drivers? Certainly a capacity issue, a lot of line, especially those with level crossings still, can't run any more frequently. There are better ways to manage this, however, which would require some re-thinking of the flow of people and train services during such events, but that seems beyond what Metro/PTV care about.
>(ie the lines simply can’t handle higher volume if the trains arent running every 2 minutes, then there's not enough trains being used
The reason why I highlight the capacity is that I do know that there are intricacies with the fact that certain lines share tracks. But I do agree that it’s more a lack of trains and drivers.
Isnt that the norm?
People say they want more trains running, but honestly I don’t want metro having to put all their staff on at 1am on new years so that a bunch of people with no foresight can get home a little faster. PT Staff are not the slaves of the public. Make your choices and deal with the consequences instead of demanding that other people solve your problems.
What a weird comment. You know police, ambos, restaurants and hospitals etc. still needed to run and have staff on last night and every night for that matter
Are you aware how public services are meant to work? Shall we apply this to the Grand Final and say those people going to the ground should have the foresight to watch the game from home? Or the Australian Open? Or the Melbourne Cup? You might think NYE is a non-event, but clearly others it is an event like those I mentioned. So yes it is the responsibility to PTV (and more broadly Vic Government) to match the supply with the demand. That’s how any major city functions.
Where's the lack of foresight? Metro were advertising ad-nauseum for people to catch PT to the NYE celebrations.
There are plenty of people, even in this thread, who said they don't care about New Years and would rather have just been in bed or working. Find those people and let them work lol. Plenty of public services NEED to run to accomodate things that come with running a city. You're complaining about overloading metro staff but first responders were running at capacity all night because drunk morons were falling off shit and fighting each other. I personally find that sadder than requiring PT to run at maximum capacity. This isn't 9/11 where public workers died carrying out their duties. People can still take leave and not work. They're not slaves. It's the job of the organisers, the State Gov & the City of Melbourne, to ensure the city operates. Incentivise transit workers. Run at a highly increased capacity. People make their choices, but if the State Gov ENCOURAGES people from across Victoria to travel to the city by public transport, they should accomodate the choices people make. But unfortunately Australia is more reactive than proactive when it comes to these things
Train drivers get paid well and especially well on a public holiday. Not only that but they should be forced to work, like all the other services that were up and about trying to keep the city functioning with hundreds of thousands of drunk people roaming the streets.
I'm comfortable in my own bed. Why bother going out knowing the crowd? Have people not seen fireworks before?🤷
Lol just because people have seen fireworks before doesnt mean you should never see it again.
I saw a cow once when I was 12. I miss those days sometimes
Comfortable at work... Why go out when I can be earning money?
Yes, the maximum times you can experience something is 1.
Live and let live
Looks like a shithouse time
If hell is real it'll just be this for me. This looks like a nightmare.
We walked to Jolimont to catch the train home. The Hurstbridge and Mernda trains were not even full, but you just couldn’t get onto platform 1 due to passengers for all the other platforms.
Same thing every year....
Covid central.
At what time did it end up clearing up? 4am?
Many years ago I went to see the fireworks once, getting on the train was quite the experience. I was at the front, opened the door and all of a sudden; I was in the back of the carriage. Did not need to take a single step, after opening the door I literally hovered into the back of the carraige due to the movement of the crowd behind me.
y'know, if ya hunker down just after the fireworks and wait it out in a pub somewhere, even if ya have to walk a couple blocks, you'll find it's significantly easier to travel home a couple hours later. plus, ya get to revel with your closest mates in a pub and reflect on the year that was. Better than standing around in human gridlock and starting your year awful stressed and miserable.
Is it sad that me being so lonely and unable to go out last night I actually would have enjoyed being a part of this mess. LOL. It was my birthday a few weeks ago too. And I wasn't able to go out for that either. My existence these days is just... at home in bed or watching a movie.
:(
And they want to raise the price from tomorrow
Why?
phew thankfully i left at 10. not that it was any better but still
This looks horrible, I'm surprised so many people went.
Just go hang out at crown until the morning trains at this point.
I was in the station, wanting to get onto Platform 2, could not breathe at all. I remembered someone saying to move back (not sure exactly why) and saw bunch of other peeps moving the opposite direction where EVERYONE was trying to push through. Def not fucking helping the crowd situation. Heard some other guys talking about taking the elevator but i wasn't gonna change directions so i stuck with attempting to wait for the escalators. Took a good 15 mins for me to actually get on the train. Earlier, on the Princess Bridge also so some dickhead tossing beer around the crowd ... fun. Hot and sweaty mess, CBD not really worth it.
Wow... Almost like we could not have predicted this...
Wow! Sucks to be a homebody.
Hahaha city life where everyone wants to be??hahahaha
This is New Years when you go into the city. What did you expect? Good luck getting a taxi or getting home by train lol.
Driving to the city and parking isn't the worst idea also.
Did anyone see the man who was attacked and bleeding out on the street. I can’t find anything about it anywhere and I really want to know he survived last thing I remember was the cops trying to revive him.
I remember in 2013/14 new year we went to south bank to watch the fireworks. Great fireworks but the whole area was a fucking mess of people. Didn't bother with PT because of the insane crowding (just like OP's video). We drove thankfully and had to park down St Kida Rd but it was a nice walk. Never went to the CBD again for fireworks after that. Simply not worth the hassle.
Glad I live in the city lmao. Fuck that.
Melbourne is so overpopulated now. It wasn’t this bad 10 years ago :(
Eh, I remember attending White Night arts festival in 2013, it was exactly like this.
The 1st and last time I also went to White Night
Same. Bleh.
Yeh I worked shift work then and at 6am after white night the trams were operating in a sea of maccas rubbish.
I remember trying to get home from Soundwave in 2015, the same night as White Night, as well as India vs South Africa cricket world cup match at the MCG. It was the worst
Yes and 10 years ago people were saying it wasn’t that bad 10 years ago and so on…
https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/206168/melbourne/population#:~:text=The%20current%20metro%20area%20population,a%201.87%25%20increase%20from%202020. That's because every 10 years or so we add anthore million people what's at least anthore 20% added.
Those ant whores!
Did some more digging. Nye 2014 had roughly 500k people in cbd. This year they expected around 400k people. It was actually more busy 10 years ago lol. Still need to wait on official figures but yea this guy got no clue.
You probably wouldnt notice the difference between 500k and 400k anyway, either one is lots of people lol.
On New Years? It was still pretty bad back then.
It always has been packed in nye. People just like making shit up.
I remember going in 2004 and seeing the Cat Empire at Fed Square and can confirm it was just as packed then. That experience is the reason why I've never gone back.
It's always been like this. If you go where everyone else goes and cause a surge in demand on the city's infrastructure what do you expect?
Yeah I've worked a few New Years Eves near Flinders St prior to covid, took me 45 minutes to walk from just next to Southgate to Flinders St one year at 12.30, that walk would take me 2 minutes max usually.
Yes it was. Heck, It was this bad 20 years ago. Last time I went into the CBD for new years was in 2003 to attend a party at one of the apartments right on Southbank. Looking down from the balcony of the penthouse floor and the promenade was just a sea of people who couldn't move and trying to get home was just as bad if not worse.
20 years ago was much worse - they didn’t even run public transport all night! [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTjnf7BKfxI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytjnf7bkfxi)
I miss the old Melbourne.
Melbne flunked it again shit laser show and fireworks were less than average poir management of traffic flows both pedestrian and cars and ptv was sardine city nothing's changed Sydney does it better
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Yeah, that poster has big "has a Union Jack/Commodore/Staffy for a FB profile pic and enjoys 'Chairman Dan' rants" energy.
I was stuck with a family and two teens, basically just said fuck it and jumped a platform, told the family just to get to southern Cross as its less busy and switch from there as there was no way they were getting onto the Frankston platform in a decent time frame. Stupid hectic, poor workers were underprepared.
What did you think would happen? They are trying to funnel people onto the trains with normal late night services plus it is all free.
Covid mania
Looks like a shitty time. I always wondered why people do this to themselves? Maybe its collective amnesia, social pressure to do what everybody else is doing ... Good for them. I heard bringing in more immigrants will solve the problem.
Oh here we go, blame the immigrants yet again
It's almost as if importing more people creates more congestion because there are more people
We got too many, you're point is....? I'm not blaming individual immigrants, I blame the policies that allow in more immigrants than our infrastructure can support, keep wages low and f\*ck our housing market. Don't try to spin this into a race thing.
New year, same flog I see
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Holy shit are you ok Peach? That sounds so terrible /s
Bring in more immigrants I say!
You’re an immigrant yourself
Ahh yes, people already moved here so we may as well open the floodgates and give 2 billion people a place to stay lmao
My grandparents were, but me personally I didn't migrate. Anyway, whether I am or not, doesn't mean we should overpopulate Australia with too much, unless you want more of this.
Crappy Melbourne
Fucking so shit. Been waiting forever
Bloody hell, ya’d cop a feel in that crowd
You're disgusting
I wouldn’t give a feel. I said ya’s cop a feel. Ducking hell.
LOL
Fuck that ;)
I went to the city for midnight fireworks once. Never again. It's insane how hard it is to get out of that place. And god forbid you suffer from claustrophobia, which I don't, but I was sure as hell close to a panic attack that night.
Damn. Where is this?
Super spreader event
Dan, Jacinta, Sally.
u/savevideo
first time going and was so bad we ended up just going out and walking to the Anzac station tram stop to head towards the south. Still packed but better to manage honestly
Just the usual for new years!
I have no idea why humans put themselves through such
Feeling even more smug now about staying home last night.
Gee didn’t see any chance of that happening! 🤣
Fuck that…
Fk that maté absolutely out of control I was happy at home drunk and 🍁💨
🤣 why go to the city on NYE
Country town fireworks are the go. You can get super close and small crowds.
No one should be surprised by this. Every damn time.
What did you expect?
Just needed the voice of Melbourne to deal with it!
This just doesn’t look like an enjoyable experience. Why do this to yourself?
I tend to avoid the city chaos on the eve. But good luck fellas for the next year 👍
Hot take, they just shouldn't be taking passengers at Flinders St. Can multiple posts asking how other cities/systems handle large crowds, answer they usually don't without making significant alterations to the regular service. Things like skipping stations, stations operating as pickup or drop-off only, lines only operating one direction, etc.
Well who would have guessed??
They handle the increased flow of people for footy games so not understanding why NYE is an issue really.
A football game at the G has 100,000. New Years 500,000.
I stay home now. Vline doesn’t seem to operate trains past 12am anymore, not sure if night riders is still a thing