You Do The Math

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?

Warm Nights On A Non Moving Train

Further signs that the Third World lifestyle we all crave is coming our way...

RailCorp must revisit procedures for managing stranded trains after scores of CityRail passengers were trapped on an interurban service between Hazelbrook and Lawson on Wednesday afternoon for over two and a half hours, despite being metres from Hazelbrook station.

The delay, initially caused by a loss of power to the privately operated Indian Pacific, was exacerbated by train controllers needing authorisation paperwork before the stranded interurban service could proceed.

In these situations the health, safety and comfort of the travelling public must be paramount. Every effort must be made to get the passengers off the train as soon as possible. Two and a half hours is a pathetic and unacceptable response, but par for the course for a management whose response to the Glenbrook Disaster is to cover their own backsides while denying resources and authority to frontline operational staff.

Justice McInerney’s inquiry into the Glenbrook disaster and the tragic loss of life made recommendations, especially regarding train operator communications, which are still yet to be acted upon. Blustering arguments from RailCorp management about safety are just hogwash as it was perfectly safe on Wednesday night to transport passengers two hundred metres to the next station (as was acknowledged by operational staff on the spot) from where people could have made alternative arrangements.

Alex Tibbits from SMH Online reported at 6.51pm that delays were due to “a truck that had rolled on to the tracks at Blackheath at about 4.50pm today.” And that “commuters are being transferred to buses at Penrith [to continue their journey]” This wasn’t happening at Lawson nearly an hour after Tibbits’ report appeared online.

Tibbits relied on a CityRail spokesman, who made no mention of the failure of the privately owned Indian Pacific - which managed to travel on to Lithgow on the “closed” line, as did the service I was stranded on after the RailCorp paperwork was completed nearly four hours later.

This is shoddy journalism as not only was his report plain wrong - and I speak as an eyewitness - but would have added to the confusion for not only the travelling public, but caused anxiety for friends and relatives of those on the train trying to find out what was happening.

When newspapers meant something they employed people on the ground called stringers to inform news editors and journalists of stories, and act as a confirmation of official versions of events. This journalism-by-press-release has undermined the credibility of the Herald in the eyes of its many readers from the Blue Mountains.

It couldn’t undermine their view of RailCorp as that simply isn’t possible.