Maurice Iemma’s announcement that more carriages will provide an extra 1200 seats on our trains shows just how hopeless our state’s transport planning and management has become (Petrol prices push commuters onto trains, SMH Online June 24).
Iemma’s trumpet was blowing as Transport Minister Watkins was telling us that rail passengers have increased by over 4% in the last twelve months - on a rail network that carries over a million people a day, this means an extra 40,000 people; all squeezing into Iemma’s extra 1200 seats. With no end in sight for escalating fuel prices it can only be assumed that rail patronage will continue to increase exponentially. It is time that the NSW Government, particularly the Premier, the Transport Minister and the Treasurer, admitted that the RailCorp network is vastly inadequate, and returned to fix the problem.
This means finishing the rail clearways program, investing in a substantial increase in rolling stock, simplifying ticketing into a time based and zonal system like every other civilised transport network, having concessions that don’t penalise part-time low income workers with high marginal transport costs and providing more than Mickey Mouse Metros that won’t come online until this city is well and truly gridlocked.
Working people and business rely on a reliable transport system to keep this city functioning - it is not a cost, it is an investment. It is laughable - and typical - that the Transport Minister reaches for the Orwellian spin of a phrase such as “people are either coming back to rail or trying rail for the first time, and it is important that we continue to improve the experience they have”.
Well, derr! We’ve seen this coming for over ten years. The experience we have is timetables that are slower than in the 1920’s, dangerous overcrowding, poorly trained and insufficient staff, management who appears to carry incompetence as a badge of pride and a government that relies on spin doctors to deny reality.
We are well down the path of creating ghettoes where populations are stranded and isolated from employment and participating in the life of this city because they cannot access it as transport is too expensive or unavailable. The disconnect between government and the population it is supposed to serve has got to the point where the entire legitimacy of this administration is called into question.
At what point does the refusal of commuters to pay for this daily humiliation become a realistic act of civil disobedience to force the orgy of incompetence that passes as the NSW Government to live up to it’s responsibilities?
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