I found this flyer during a clearout of the PTUA office last week.

Judging from the text it appears to be from late 1992 — perhaps around the time Jeff Kennett was elected in October 1992.

What’s changed since then?

Tram routes

Route 69 is now route 16, connecting via St Kilda Beach through to the City/Melbourne University.

The other tram routes are much the same, though route 8 currently runs through to Moreland. There is a proposal for this to connect instead at Domain to route 55, running via William Street, the hospital precinct and the Zoo to West Coburg, forming route 58. PTV want feedback on this.

I think it’s a good idea. It’s part of a plan to better balance out large and small trams where the former are needed, and (if I understand this right, is yet again completely undersold by PTV) is associated with a frequency boost to 10 minutes across the entire tram network. Even if it’s not quite all of the network, they should be shouting about this from the rooftops.

I’m less sure about the route number. If you want to confuse people on the northern end, replace route 55 with route 8. If you want to confuse the people on the southern end, replace the 8 with the 55. Seems to me calling it 58 just confuses everybody.

But I digress.

Frequencies

Tram frequencies are mostly the same, but on Sundays they’ve improved a lot, particularly on Sunday afternoons, mostly to every 12 minutes.

Of course the imagery of tram conductors selling you a ticket isn’t something you’d see now! In fact these days you can’t buy a ticket (or top up a Myki) on a tram at all — both options were originally planned for the Myki system, but removed in the 2011 “de-scoping” by the Coalition state government.

No tram museum in Malvern anymore — you want the Hawthorn tram museum, up the road.

Fares

A footnote says a “small increase in fares” is due 1/1/93.

The $1.90 zone 1 2-hour base fare is now $3.76 on Myki.

The 2014 price for Z1 was $3.58. The RBA calculator only goes as far as 2014; it says if the $1.90 in 1992 had gone up only by CPI, it would have been $3.37 in 2014. But remember there was a slight price cut in 2013 when everyone was forced off single tickets onto Myki.

Due to the removal of zone 3 (2007) and the capping of zone 1+2 fares to the zone 1 rate (2015), the $4.50 quoted for zones 1+2+3 back then is now $3.76 as well. (With CPI rises, this would have been $7.97 in 2014. It was actually $6.06 then.)

This reflects what we know about fares — over the years, the removal/capping of zones has meant a real terms cut for those travelling in 2 or 3 zones. But zone 1 has increased in real terms. ‘Cos everyone in zone 1 is rich, right?

Other changes

I’m not sure why they list South Yarra and Malvern as being only on the Dandenong/Pakenham line. (The Cranbourne line didn’t exist then.) The Frankston line served both of those, though maybe they didn’t want people confused by expresses. These days it’s mostly the Dandenong line trains that run express.

The flyer doesn’t mention train frequencies, but outside peak, these have increased a lot since 1992. Back then most trains were every 20 minutes on weekdays, 40 on Sundays. Across the network, Sunday frequencies mostly doubled in 1999, and more recently the Frankston and Dandenong lines got upgraded to every 10 minutes or better, 7 days a week.

As for the shopping centre itself — how has that changed? Others might know better than me, but my guess is Malvern Central (which isn’t really in central Malvern) might be the biggest change there — as well as the de-regulation of shopping hours under Kennett.

Happy shopping!

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