To - and from - the tennis

We can't really complain about public transport arrangements to get us to the tennis, because the 605 bus from the end of our street drops us off right outside HiSense arena.  True, the frequency isn't great (and is even worse in January), so we have to plan our trip, but once we get that sorted, it's an uncrowded, virtually door-to-door, air-conditioned trip.  And if the bus times don't suit, there's always the train to Richmond.
Getting home after an evening session is a different matter.    The session we attended was on a Thursday and play was still in progress at midnight.   The bus doesn't run after 7 pm, and the train service in the evening is a bit "lumpy" with the services being bunched together.  Once again, some pre-planning is needed.   But the big, big issue is, what do you do if the game is still going at midnight?   True, on Fridays and Saturdays, the trains  run until 1 am, and in addition I suppose there are "night-rider" buses.  The latter are a bit of a mystery to mere mortals such as me, and anyway they only run on Friday and Saturdays night.   On other evenings, the only option is a taxi or a tram back to the city if you had the foresight to drive in and park there.

In relation to the taxis: when we left in time to catch the last train - before the end of play at both Rod Laver and HiSense - the taxi queue was (I would guess) getting on for 100 metres.    There was an equivalent queue of taxis, true; the delay was getting passengers into the cabs  - not helped by a set of traffic lights just past the head of the taxi queue, which stopped the cabs from moving off.

What's the solution?  Perhaps there isn't an easy one.    I don't normally travel by train at around midnight, so I don't know if the quite-full train that we caught home is typical.   If there are regularly passengers around at that time, then perhaps run services until 1 am throughout the week (instead of just on Fridays and Saturdays)?  Otherwise, perhaps run them for the duration of the tennis?   This wouldn't solve the issue in relation to matches that went even later, but it would help.  Another possibility would be to run some or all of the tram services past midnight (in addition to the shuttle trams to the tennis, which do wait until the last match is finished).

After I had prepared a draft of this post, Daniel Bowen drew attention to a proposal for all-night trains at weekends.Of particular interest is  his comparison with other cities.  Apparently all-night trains aren't common around the world, but many cities have better all-night bus services.  From my intermittent observations, I would say that the signage of such services is in many cases much better than in Melbourne which, to my mind, is an important factor in encouraging their use.    While there's some information in Swanston St, there's not a lot elsewhere.   It's not much use having a service if no-one knows about it.