(AU) Railway Safety/Running

[Raichase]

This will probably only be understood by the Australians here, and mostly only those from Sydney, but our trains seem to be getting more and more messed up:

1. Cityrail has yet to have a train come on time for the last year or so...
2. Trains are usually overcrowded, or under-used.
3. They keep cutting services, and replacing them with less frequent services that have more coaches (e.g instead of 2 4-car trains coming within 10 minutes of each other, they change it to 1 8-car train every 20 minutes), and as a result cause delays as more people pile on and off the trains.
4. Trains are constantly breaking down, or not turning up at all.
5. Cityrail is ignorning saftey issues, and trying to push ontime running (encouraging the bending of speed limits, only putting new saftey features in after the media has a field day, etc)
6. Trains sometimes skip stations in peak hour so that they can run a little less behind.
7. We still have coaches in service from the 1950's (and they are *dodgy*)
8. A lot of accidents could have been prevented with proper saftey equiptment:
Glenbrook accident (a mainline passenger commuter train ran into the back of a cross-country train, causing loss of life. Cause was due to a red signal not functioning properly)
Waterfall accident (a commuter passenger train suddenly sped up and jumped off the rails, shearing into a rock-face and then falling over, causing loss of life. The driver had suffered a heart attack, and his weight had stopped the emergency breaks from kicking in.)
9. Cityrail has a policy of containment, which means that there is no way for passengers to get on or off a train except for the doors - this is really bad when the train is on it's side, and people can't get to, or open the doors...

The papers say that the bloke looking into the accidents said that there would be other accidents in the future unless major improvments are made - meanwhile the government keeps building more roads, and we all know how safe *those* are .

I only catch a train twice a week, and I'm worried and annoyed (usually because said train is overcrowded, un airconditioned and late), so I can imagine how the people that must commute to the city 5 days a week must feel...

Just needed to get some stuff off my chest there. Sorry to all the non-aussies out there who have no idea what I am on about .

[BobDendry]

Yeah, Cityrail is pretty bad. I call it sh*tyrail
Chrome Dome (micheal Costa) actually caught a flyer from sydney to morriset one night. It was the night of a storm (sometime in december)
The track power was brought. So an 18 car V Set, being pulled by an NR class was dispatched to go up to newcastle. Chrome Dome Reached Morriset at Midnight. I spit on him
Cityrail needs to:
1. Replace those old 620 railcars and the old tulloch trailers. Early V Sets and R, S and L sets should be scrapped also.
2. Fix those damn millenium bugs!
3. Fix their bloody timetable up so trains run on time. In the new timetable they've just cut lots of trains. What a piece of BS!
In conclusion, I would say Cityrail is bad

[Raichase]

Yay, support!

What they really need to do, is fix it, and sell it off, so that the company running it is more worried about making a profit, than just providing public transport - that way, the owners would care that they are losing all these passengers (customers) due to saftey and running problems (defective product).

Unless they sold it to Costa .

[BobDendry]

If they sold it to Costa it would become the "Cost(a)ly Transport Company."
If Bob Carr offered to buy it, it would be proposed as the "Car(r) proposal"

[ajy170]

Well the train service up here in Brisbane,Queensalnd is damn good. They are allways bang on time when ever i use them, and they get to where i am going when transinfo says they will get there. Air conditioned, lots of seats, quite, your not getting slamed all over the place like what happens on a bus during Peek-Hour.[/url]

[BobDendry]

We were mainly referring to Sydney. I've always heard good stroies of QR so I just thought they'd be good . Speaking of QR, At Goninans, Broadmeadow (near where I live). I spotted a heap of MASSIVE hoppers with "QR National" Written on them. Unpainted. They looked good.

[Raichase]

Well, really, the account of QR is interesting. Good for comparison - I find it interesting that all of this changes the second you cross the state line. As the QLD government is also Labour, you have to wonder what they are not telling the NSW Government, eh?

[BobDendry]

Heheheh. Maybe QR should be in charge of Cityrail.

[Raichase]

Well, it sounds like they do a better job - I imagine they have safter running too, as apart from the recent Tilt Train accident, I have heard nothing .

[Lightglobe]

Have a look at Melbournes public transport as well. It is well run because it is privately owned instead of government owned. NSW needs to sell off the transport because seriously it would then be with someone who actually needs to have reliable services so they can make money because they need people to travel on their services.

In some places, privitisation is a good thing.

[Raichase]

As long as they don't sell the track to one company, the signals to another, the passenger trains to a third, the freight trains to a fourth and so on...

[ajy170]

That would be an interesting situation No, public transport should be the State's job, or local, take your pick but it should be run by the goverenment.

[BobDendry]

Privitisation may be the key. I just know that Costa isn't doing a good job. When the public transport company is praised (if ever) he comes out and says "Yeah, yeah, It was us, We're so good."
And when something bad happens? He goes missing!

[Raichase]

And when something bad happens? He goes missing!

Probably stuck on another train .

A local (non-govenment) bus service I catch once a week that runs in co-operation with STA Buses (ie it picks up parts of the Northern Beaches that STA buses can't/don't) does quite well - STA buses are comfier, but Forest Coach Lines has a newer fleet of buses (ie their oldest bus is newer than the old STA buses), are usually on time, and are rarely crowded.

However, STA Buses in my area are great. It's a 5 minute walk to a bus stop, and I can go anywhere I would want to go without having to change. Sometimes, if I want to take a different route, or go somewhere a little more obscure (for example, up the coast), I will need to change buses once. Also, we have a lot of Wheelchair buses running on these routes, and are very comfortable. I'm lucky they have a bus at 6:05am at all, letalone a really comfortable, undercrowded and on time bus

Pity the trains didn't work that way...

[Purno]

2. Trains are usually overcrowded, or under-used.

We've some problems with this in the Netherlands too, at least IMO.

[BobDendry]

Don't get me started on the public buses here. To get to school, I have to catch a public bus, because they won't give us a school bus. I've had civilians assaulting students, knife threats against me by civilians and more. To make matters worse, the FIRST bus reaches my school at 9.00. Thats 10 minutes after school starts. The bus is regularly 10 minutes late ON TOP OF that. I can catch 3 buses to get to school 30 mins earlier. Not worth the bother, cause I have to sit at a bus stop in the middle of nowhere for half an hour. I've done it a few times. But I've had people trying to "give me a lift".

[Purno]

Well, compared to that public transport in the Netherlands isn't that bad, although I waited once 45 minutes at a bus-stop when it was cold because the changed the time table

EDIT: Oh and citybusses are often very crowded

[Watto]

Wow...and I thought people hated the british railway system...

[Louie Armstrong]

I love the British Rail System gets me where i want to go, only had a couple of major slip ups, the delays arent ever much more than a few minutes and only once have i been put on a bus instead of a train

[ChrisCF]

As long as they don't sell the track to one company, the signals to another, the passenger trains to a third, the freight trains to a fourth and so on...

That is what's better known as Railtrack Syndrome.