The idea was that as the two daylight intercapital  XPTs crossed between Junee and Coota, if a flock of  buses converged on Coota station just before the first XPT, spent an hour there for bus drivers' rest breaks and departed after the second XPT, then people throughout the southern half of the state could go anywhere, including Melbourne and Canberra same day. 

The hour also gave those changing from bus to bus access to meals and washroom at the station. The scheme came unstuck about a decade ago when the XPT's began meeting south of Junee.

The obvious solution is for the northbound XPT to leave Melbourne earlier, speed up or do a combination of these. This would involve the ARTC showing goodwill towards passenger operations.

Another would be to downgrade the hub at Cootamundra and reinstate a version of the old Riverina Express to Griffith. It would leave Central about an hour later than the Melbourne XPT and cross the opposing Riverina Express between Junee and Cootamundra. Passengers for Hay and Mildura would join their bus at one of the MIA towns. This would cost the state budget but fulfill a constant political demand. I guess readers would prefer this latter solution.

This month has had a mix of good and not so good news on the climate change front.

A good news story – earlier this month some 197 countries agreed to a deal to reduce emissions of factory-made hydrofluorocarbon gases (HFCs).

HFCs are reportedly 100,000 times more powerful than carbon dioxide as greenhouse gases and emissions have been increasing as sales of fridges and air conditioning have been increasing in developing economies such as China and India.

The reduction will be phased in with the US and Europe aiming to reduce the output of these gases by 85 per cent by 2036 with China – the world’s worst – freezing their use by 2024.  A small group of less-developed countries will start the reduction in 2029. 

According to the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development,  the agreement is likely to result in “largest temperature reduction ever achieved by a single agreement”.

And according to the US Natural Resources Defense Council, the deal is “equal to stopping the entire world's fossil-fuel CO2 emissions for more than two years”.

Finally, according to the online independent news site: the deal is legally binding with specific timetables and an agreement by rich countries to help poor countries adapt their technology, and; HFC emissions are currently equivalent to 300 coal-fired plants.

Which, by itself, is all good. But to keep it in perspective – according to the IEA Clean Coal Centre, there are over 2300 coal-fired power stations worldwide (7000 individual units). Approximately 620 of these power stations are in China.

So the bigger issue remains. And the planet is still getting warmer

The global warming trend continues, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

It says the combined average temperature over global land and ocean surfaces for August 2016 was the highest for August in the 137-year period of record, marking the 16th consecutive month of record warmth for the globe. Even in Australia, the Bureau of Meteorology reports that, despite what seemed a cold and wet winter:

“Both maximum and minimum temperatures were above average for Australia during August, with minima the more notable of the two,” the BOM reported.