The rail review into Sydney’s day of commuter horror in May has unearthed serious problems with the city’s rail network, but one question remains: when is it going to be fixed?<\/p>\n
New South Wales Transport Minister John Graham told reporters on Tuesday that among the “blunt” findings, the department has identified five key areas for improvement.<\/p>\n
The Independent Rail Review, released on Tuesday, was commissioned after a wire failure between Strathfield and Homebush stations on May 20 brought the network to a standstill for two days.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Kerry Schott spoke to the media about her report findings on Tuesday. (AAP: Bianca De Marchi)<\/p>\n
The government has accepted all 12 recommendations made by the review, though its author Kerry Schott warned any remedies to the issues identified would take time.<\/p>\n
The government has only completed half of the recommendations from a 2023 report into Sydney’s rail network, Dr Schott said.<\/p>\n
“A lot of them can’t be done straight away, and I’m not making any excuses for any delay with them, but they are being attended to,” Dr Schott said at a press conference.<\/p>\n
Here’s how the NSW government plans to prevent further chaos on the state’s rail network.<\/p>\n
Big investment in maintenance upgrades<\/p>\n
One of the major issues highlighted in the report was how the Sydney Trains rail network has been maintained in recent years.<\/p>\n
Mr Graham said the government was committing $485 million over the next four years to “renewing the assets” of the system.<\/p>\n
“That will include upgrading track, signals, overhead wiring and drainage in flood-prone areas and that will begin this year,” he said.<\/p>\n
“And a dedicated $35 million reliability program which will focus on the centre of the network.<\/p>\n
“We’ll also establish rapid incident response teams operating out of Redfern and Homebush.”<\/p>\n
‘New technology’ on the rail network<\/p>\n
Pointing to the digital scan that identified the wire problem in May, Mr Graham said the government was rolling out “new technology” as part of its response to the review.<\/p>\n
That scan was recently run again, finding 126 “points of interest”, and will now be completed annually to address any similar issues, Mr Graham said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The train which struck overhead wires near Strathfield leaving hundreds of passengers stuck in carriages for hours in May. (ABC News)<\/p>\n
The review found the wire near Strathfield Station that halted the network in May had been identified as a risk in 2020 but was never repaired.<\/p>\n
“What took two days for passengers, if you’re trying to catch a train in Sydney, should have taken just a day to resolve,” Mr Graham said.<\/p>\n
Binoculars out, lasers in<\/p>\n
One of the findings in the review focused on the primitive way in which staff were detecting issues on the network.<\/p>\n
Workers had been using binoculars to look for signs of problems with overhead wires across the city’s network.<\/p>\n
To address this, Mr Graham said the government would now roll out “laser hand-held devices”.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
A close up of the overhead wire resting on the train in May. (Supplied: NSW Government)<\/p>\n
“While looking at wires through binoculars does on the face of it sound a bit archaic and weird the difficulty with it is we do need to keep the trains running,” Dr Schott said.<\/p>\n
“The people looking at the wires are actually usually standing some distance from the wire they are looking at.”<\/p>\n
Communication ‘made the situation worse’<\/p>\n
Another key aspect that came into the focus of the review was how Transport for NSW delivered the bad news to commuters when the network shut down in May.<\/p>\n
While not laying out a timeline for how the communication changes will take place, Mr Graham vowed the public could expect better from the agency.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Passengers wait at Parramatta train station after overhead wires fell on a train in May. (ABC News)<\/p>\n
“One of the things we need to do is that to make sure the information isn’t making it worse for passengers,” Mr Graham said.<\/p>\n
“Information which is wrong being distributed at the time was actually making this situation worse.<\/p>\n
“That will change.”<\/p>\n
Half-a-billion-dollar fleet to go live soon<\/p>\n
To replace what Mr Graham said was an ageing fleet, a new “more reliable” replacement was going to hit the tacks in a few weeks’ time.<\/p>\n
The new trains set for the Blue Mountains and Newcastle lines are expected to go live in October, he said.<\/p>\n
“We have invested more than half a billion dollars renewing the Tangara fleet,” Mr Graham told reporters.<\/p>\n
“That will mean we are able to retire older fleets and that will mean, for passengers, the rail system is more reliable.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The rail review into Sydney’s day of commuter horror in May has unearthed serious problems with the city’s…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":249846,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4740,132446,132447,50,5326,132445,19614],"class_list":{"0":"post-249845","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-australia","9":"tag-john-graham","10":"tag-kerry-schott","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-nsw-government","13":"tag-sydney-trains","14":"tag-trains"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115255577990517467","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249845"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249845\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/249846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}