I am appalled with Sydney's public transport.
My bus was delayed by fifteen minutes. Sure, that made me grumpy but what really made enraged was the quality of the bus vehicle. It
could not accelerate. As we all know, Australia is no Italy or Japan and our land is not consistently flat. So, I find it ridiculous that this bus was unable to accelerate up a slope. When it stopped in the middle of driving uphill, it was moving
backwards. I'm sure that's not the driver's choice or incompetence as I could hear the engine running at full throttle, trying to accelerate. The bus after mine was scheduled to arrive ~10min later but the later bus actually overtook the bus I was on and arrived at my destination earlier. How is this bus that I was on, given approval to be used to carry the public?
It got me thinking about the recent fare increase in the public transport and the release of Sydney's roads and transport long master plan last year.
A 2012
PWC report says Sydney is the fourth worst major city in relation to transport and infrastructure. For public transport, Sydney's train ticket fares are one of the highest.
Last year, the NSW government announced the transport fares will rise. It was inevitable, it happens every year and to every state so I cannot complain. They had risen to the following accordingly:
- Individual bus fares by ten cents
- Travel tens by 80 cents
- Single train tickets by 20 cents
- Weekly train tickets by $1
In 2011, there was a media release that Cityrail was making a large loss because of the amount of people committing ticket evasion. If this is still the current situation with Cityrail, that will probably suggest the delayed changes and awful quality. However, raising the ticket fares will only encourage more commuters to evade paying for their tickets won't it?
On the bright side, the government delayed a further increase as suggested by the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal (IPART). Transport minister Gladys Berejiklian said the newly adjusted fares are to correspond with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) (
source) -
The government has always been clear that public transport fares will only increase in line with CPI until there are demonstrable improvements in customer service, and this decision reflects that commitment
There are only two ways I can interpret this:
- The profit the government will gain from the fare raise will support the improvement of our transport system in the distant future, or
- The government is penalising us under the guise of being the good guys.
As cynical as I can be, I'm guessing it is the former. However, if Cityrail's mission is to develop our public transport system and enhance passengers' experience, why has nothing been done yet?
There will need to be some profit to fund for the 20 year long master plan for Sydney's infrastructure and transport, I imagine. The December release of the O'Farrell's government's master plan thas been met with many criticisms and disappointments and I can see why. The master plan carries out schemes that will be executed in the next 20 years and address problems that have been addressed plenty of times in the past. One, for example, is upgrading Princes Highway to lower traffic congestion. Upgrading a major road is fine with me, I see no harm in funding towards that. However, the plan also releases the proposal for a light metro link in CBD and central Sydney. I am puzzled with that piece of news. While I do see we need to reconstruct the transport and road links in the CBD, I do not see how investing so much money to create metro links, when we have a train line that is based around city (City Circle), an existing tram link, and several bus services does the same job but only needs to be improved.
The plan seems to concentrate the Northern and central area of Sydney (second harbour, light rail, connecting bus services, single deck trains etc) which has been pointed out by Ryan Park, Keira MP ("You'd want to see a hell of a lot more than what's in there [sic] because [the] plan virtually says zero about the Illawarra, it says zero about regional New South Wales") and chairman of NSW infrastructure, Nick Greiner ("One of the weaknesses is there are not a lot of good ideas about western Sydney", "The real question if you look out 10 to 20 years are north-south links. Western Sydney is sort of the problem, it is where the population growth is.") However, there has been an announcement that a release of plans for Illawarra will be due this year and acknowledgement for more improvements for Western Sydney, as well as profuse promises for an express train between Parramatta and the city CBD to reduce peak-hour congestion, has been mentioned more than a few times. I just hope that these promises will be met in due time (bloody hell, you guys need 20 years to do this? See if I'll wait that long, assholes). Now, that's my brief summary about the plan, let's see what signs has there been recently that suggests a step promoting those promises:
On the 18th January 2013, Sydney and the rest of Australia was hit with a 45 degree heatwave. Australia has been known for it's dry and hot weather so I thought Cityrail would have been prepared for such intense weather. As usual, we are left disappointed in our NSW train services. Reports flooded in from social media and news correspondences that almost all the trains were delayed in peak-hour and some of the trains were not air conditioned. I am a regular commuter and I was disgusted in the poor condition of the train services that evening. Crowds of commuters were left stuck at several stations waiting for bus services.
A
Daily Telegraph article reported that many of the older train carriages had faulty emergency alarms. They discovered that emergency alarms on trains are checked less than three times a year. The same news article said that the government's release of the Waratah train models will reduce the amount of faulty alarms despite the 189 reported incidents on trains in the first three months of 2012, 23 of which were sexual assaults and 64 assaults. The discovery of these alarms were blamed on the previous Labor government. That is true but that is no excuse to making our lives safer, isn't it? A
2011 report by the NSW Bureau of Crime and Statistics highlights that over the last ten years until 2011, the recorded number of non-DV assault and other sexual offences has risen by 1.6% and 7.6% every year respectively. While the Waratah trains will eventually replace the older trains and therefore, be equipped with working alarms, this resolution did not clarify whether the alarms will be checked regularly. Furthermore, if the integration of the Millenium trains were anything to go by, the Waratah trains will only replace a limited number of existing older trains. In 2002, the delivery of 80 Millenium trains were used to replace 56 'Tulloch' carriages which were used back in the mid-1960s (
source). I believe that the government's word that they will replace the oldest of trains with the new Waratah models are true however, I do not trust that they will check the emergency alarms regularly or replace many of the train carriages with fake alarms.
Today, a fire alarm had caused the Bankstown, Inner West, Airport & East Hills, South, North Shore, Western, Northern, Blue Mountains and Newcastle & Central Coast lines to all be delayed by twenty minutes. You know what, I don't need to say any more than "Fucking typical".
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| SMH Online Poll Oct 2012 |
There has been no suggestion that RailCorp is going to improve the train or bus system so far. We have been given countless empty promises and now with the release of a plan and the increase of fares, there does seem to be signs that there might be improvements in the future. Personally, I think RailCorp and the government need to get their crap together.
