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Dear All,

I must really apologise for the lack of posts lately. Usual excuses, I’m totally flat out at work at the moment and busy moving houses.

Never fear though, I’m still catching 2 to 4 trains a day.

This story took the cake though and I had to comment.

Alvin Singh a software developer has created a program for the iPhone called “Transit Sydney” which he sells on iTunes for $2.49 per copy. There aren’t many downloads at the moment, but I see huge potential for an application like this. (see image inset)

It seems that Railcorp have secretly been planning their own iPhone application, eek. and that they are trying to force Mr Singh to remove his application on the grounds of copyright infringements as Railcorp have copyright to their timetable.

Now, fair enough on the copyright issue, but surely this is one of those applications where “it’s for the greater good”. I know for a fact that there are usually only 4 or so timetables per platform, sometimes on smaller stations there are only 2 or 1! Usually there is someone’s head in the way, or a speaker or your glasses perscription just isn’t strong enough. An application like this would give you the next train(roughly) at a glance.

What would be really cool, would be if Railcorp had a web front end for all their timetables and put this live data online. The technology is there, and honestly, it’s not that hard.

Is Railcorp afraid that people will suddenly realise just how late their trains are running, and now matter if they change on time trains to > 10mins late that they will still have poor performance levels on some lines?

Anyway I think this is a huge over reaction on Railcorps part and this gentleman should be allow to keep selling his product.

I’ll keep an eye on this one.

Image source : www.smh.com.au

Dear All RateCityRail Readers,

It’s been pointed out to me by one of our readers that the signups to register and make comment wern’t working properly for the last few weeks. Well, thanks to Rupert the issue has now been resolved, so feel free to signup and start making comments on any of my blogs. I’m looking forward to the comments, both agreeing and disagreeing.

Register is down the bottom right of this page.

We’ll be looking to add a forum to this site soon again like the old days so you can all start your own discussions.

Cheers, RCR

So I wind up with a new job and studying again, and I’m on the train now more than ever! I hate to say it but it doesn’t seem like all that much has changed since I started writing last. Cityrail is clearly making concerted efforts to exercise change, but either red tape or a lack of money is holding them back.

I hope this this second coming of RCR I can investigate these issues and share my experiences on the trains as a fellow commuter.

We’ll look to open the site up to more bloggers as we continue to grow, but unless last time, we’ll start small and work our way up gradually as we just bit off a little too much last time. We had a unique forum community consisting travellers and Cityrail discussing issues and I’d like to see this return over time.

So keep an eye on this site, it will be back and better than ever! Also my thanks to Peter for his coding and time getting us back online.

I’m looking forward to reading all the comments and new blogs we start!

RCR