Melbourne is a 24 hour city now – look at how the iconic Flinders Street Station lights up during White Night
Whether you are coming from a small town or a big city, relocating to Melbourne will be a treat. As of midnight of the 1 Jan 2016, Melbourne is on a year-long trial running public transport throughout the evening. All train lines, except for two minor ones, will be running every hour. Six tram lines will also be running during this trial period every 30 minutes and these are: 19, 67, 75, 86, 96 and 109. Interestingly enough, there are no westbound trams. Previously, the trams ran till about 2AM on Fridays and Saturdays.
Melbourne vs. Sydney
Offering a 24-hour public transport network is part of the Home Safe initiative spearheaded by the mayor of the city, Robert Doyle, and the recently-minted premier of the state, Daniel Andrews. In their views, providing a city with a vibrant nightlife will have a positive impact on tackling anti-social behaviour. Not only has the city provided incentives to restaurants, museums, etc. to stay open later, they also have been extending the liquor licenses for bars to operate later. This plan moves completely the opposite direction of what Sydney has done in minimising violence on the streets. Sydney enforced lockout laws in 2014 and allegedly as a direct result, there have been a number of bars close down because they were losing money and some still say the incidences of violence has just moved to areas where the lockout laws are not in effect. I’ll side with Melbourne on this. I suppose that more people there are on the streets, the less likely a person will start a fight. Maybe. But we all do feel safer when there are more people around than walking on a sparsely filled street.
So if you are moving to Melbourne this year and you’re the type to stay out late, you can be rest assured that you are relocating to a good city.
