By the time Tony co-founded Lonely Planet Publications in 1973, he already had the travel bug. And ever since, travel and discovery have been at the heart of his life and career.
Melbourne has a new subway line – the Metro Tunnel – running through five new stations and currently having a soft opening, before the schedule launches full tilt on 1 February 2026. The new Parkville Station will probably be the most useful new station, since it’s at the University of Melbourne which badly needed a handy Metro station.
▲ The Town Hall Station
The two new central city stations might look slightly redundant since the Town Hall Station is only a couple of hundred metres from Flinders St Station and the State Library Station is right beside the Melbourne Central Station. In fact you might find it easier to enter the State Library Station from Melbourne Central rather than from its own entrance. The Metro Tunnel line, however, runs in a different direction than the other lines through Flinders St and Melbourne Central.
Unfortunately to use the new line you still need the horrible old Myki Card. Transport Victoria have announced that they are introducing ‘tap and go’ technology to Melbourne. Tomorrow? No, they are testing it in 2026 and at some point in the future you’ll actually be able to use it. But didn’t they start testing it in 2023 at some stations? Well yes they did, but clearly three years of testing wasn’t enough, there’s more testing to be rolled out in 2026
◄ My hated Myki Card
Hasn’t anybody asked them about this before? Well yes, for one person I asked Transport Victoria why we couldn’t use contactless cards in Melbourne when London introduced the technology in 2014. So that’s 10 years ago.
And I did get an answer, ‘we’re working on it and hope to introduce it soon.’ Which in Melbourne seems to be in 10 years time. So for over 10 years I’ve been able to use my Australian ANZ credit card to pay for public transport in London, England. But not in Melbourne, Australia. Absurd isn’t it?
Once upon a time Melbourne was a regular ‘most liveable city in the world’ title holder. How could you be a ‘most liveable city’ and at the same time operate the world’s most-visitor-unfriendly-travel-card? I suggested that in 2013 and 13 years later my opinion hasn’t changed. Never mind, the new Metro Tunnel Line reportedly took lots of lessons from London’s very popular Elizabeth Line. In London I often use the Elizabeth Line even if it means travelling a bit further because it’s so fast and convenient. Perhaps Melbourne can also learn from London how to get rid of the Myki Card.
▲ The Elizabeth Line at Bond St.in London
Since it opened in 2022 the Elizabeth Line quickly became the busiest railway line in the UK although technically it’s not part of the London Underground network. It runs out to Heathrow Airport – but so does the Piccadilly Line – and even further to Reading. It’s popular and has won architectural awards as well as being so busy. Check my August 2024 posting about riding the London Tube.
I’m in Alaska travelling with an LPTV film crew making a program for the forthcoming Roads Less Travelled series with National Geographic. I’ve travelled up to the ghost town of McCarthy from where it’s out on to the Root Glacier. Monty and Paul, my two Root Glac...
I’m in Alaska travelling with an LPTV film crew making a program for the forthcoming Roads Less Travelled series with National Geographic. Having got to Whittier I’m now heading up to the Wrangell-St Elias National Park. Crossing Prince William Sound on an Alaska...
I’m in Alaska travelling with an LPTV film crew making a program for the forthcoming Roads Less Travelled series with National Geographic. I’ve already posted a ‘getting to Alaska’ blog. The train route along Cook Inlet. From Anchorage, the state capital, we ...
I’m in Alaska, shooting another program for the forthcoming LPTV- /National Geographic series The Roads Less Travelled. The 13 part series follows Lonely Planet writers and photographers ‘on the road’ and launches later this year. I worked on the Laos program in the s...
There’s been a lot of music in 2009 – check my blog Al Stewart & Newcastle for Leonard Cohen and Neil Young in Australia, Van Morrison at the Albert Hall in London and Al Stewart in Newcastle. But there’s also been opera in Australia – Lady Macbeth of Mtsen...
At the end of my first day on a recent trip to Budapest I got nabbed for fare evasion on the subway! It rained all day and towards the end of the day, as the rain got heavier, we (there were four of us) decided to head back to the hotel. Of course we could not ...
St Pancras Railway Station and Eurostar Earlier this week I went to a meeting of the Overland Alliance – it’s a proposed new organisation to promote travelling to Europe from the UK at surface level. Now that the high speed line from London to the Channel is ope...
Maureen and I visited Budapest last week. It rained the whole time we were there, but we still had an interesting visit to a city which – for me – manages to combine some of the flavour of Prague and Vienna. Check our Budapest city guide and then some views from our t...
From my recent trip to the Faroes I’ve posted blogs on the pretty little village of Gjógv and the island of Mykines, the place to go if you want to see puffins. I also spent some time in the capital city – Tórshavn – drove around all the major interconnected islands (...
En route to the Faroe Islands I stopped off in Copenhagen and caught Doug Lansky’ Signspotting show. Doug has put together two Signspotting books for Lonely Planet, photographs of the weird and wonderful signs you bump into all over the world. In Copenhagen the...
© Tony Wheeler’s Travels 2013