A host station is a category of railway station on Melbourne's suburban rail network which is operated by Metro Trains Melbourne. In terms of station standards, a host station is a middle standard station which sits between the low standard unmanned stations and the high standard premium stations.
Host stations have the following facilities available during morning peak times (typically 6 am - 10 am Monday to Friday):
- Open male and female toilets
- Typically two station hosts (customer service staff who assist passengers with queries and ticketing) and/or
- An open, staffed customer service centre (booking office), in most cases providing the same services as those of premium stations during hours where staff are available.
The Host Station program was introduced by the Victorian Department of Transport in the early 2000s to ensure that over 80 per cent of suburban rail passengers started their journey from a staffed (host or premium) station. Like most other Melbourne railway stations, host stations contain ticketing facilities, Passenger Information Displays, CCTV video survalience cameras and passenger information display boards (displaying timetables, maps, network performance, disruption notices, etc.) which are available from the first train of the day to the last.
Read more about Host Station: Current Host Stations, Future Host Stations
Famous quotes containing the words host and/or station:
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“[T]here is no situation so deplorable ... as that of a gentlewoman in real poverty.... Birth, family, and education become misfortunes when we cannot attain some means of supporting ourselves in the station they throw us into. Our friends and former acquaintances look on it as a disgrace to own us.... If we were to attempt getting our living by any trade, people in that station would think we were endeavoring to take their bread out of their mouths.”
—Sarah Fielding (1710–1768)