Thursday 29 August 2019

Sydney Trains: Wrecked By Neglect

sign seen on the North West Metro

(This is the extended version of an article I wrote for Green Left Weekly https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/sydney-trains-wrecked-neglect )

Sydney Trains: Wrecked By Neglect
Andrew Chuter

August 2019: a minor mechanical fault on a train at Town Hall caused a series of lengthy delays across the network for the entire day.

Flashback to May 2012: Transport Minister, Gladys Berejiklian, announces the breakup of RailCorp into Sydney Trains and NSW Trains. The media release described it as “biggest shakeup to the State’s railways in a generation to fix the trains and provide customers with the service standard they deserve.”

Clearly the now Premier thinks the people of NSW deserve very little. Last week’s rail fail was hardly an exception. In 2018 there were similar network-wide incidents in January, August and New Year’s Eve. Excuses range from lightning strikes, a children’s balloon, to large event crowds and archaic technology. A report from Feb 2018 cited a ‘tangled network’ and understaffing. This shouldn’t be news to anyone. A number of key projects aimed at untangling are still incomplete over a decade after first being announced and the Rail Tram and Bus Union has been vocal about staff shortages for a long time.

So what is the root cause of these regular failures? It’s instructive to look at some other recent transport fails in NSW and find patterns.

NORTH WEST METRO

In the 3 months since the driverless North West Metro opened, there have been serious incidents every two and a half days. Issues include:

  • Doors that fail to open and passengers having to backtrack to get to where they’re going.
  • Complaints of trains at Chatswood that depart just before passengers, hoping to interchange, arrive on the other side of the platform.
  • A mother separated from her child as the train doors closed too quickly and no guard was there to notice.
  • Information displays with false, contradictory or confusing information.

No wonder then that residents of the northwest are fuming. Hundreds turned out at a public forum in Cherrybrook recently. They are angered by the cancellation of many bus services that are seen as a way to force people onto the Metro, even though it takes longer and they now have to drive to the station. Two separate online petitions demanding the return of all bus services have reached a combined 13,000 signatures.

This Metro was funded from $8 billion of the proceeds of the privatisation of the state’s electricity network. A further $30 billion is planned to be spent on extending the system west and south-west of the city. Rail and infrastructure experts, such as Sandy Thomas and John Austen have derided the system as unfit for purpose and based on false assertions. Former director-general for rail, Ron Christie, co-authored a report that concluded, "if the government had spent $17 billion on upgrading the existing double-deck system by improving signalling and providing track amplification at critical pinch points, it would have got a better overall result."

BUS BLOWOUT

While the Hills district is having buses axed, massive largesse is expended in the Transport Minister Andrew Constance’s regional seat of Bega. An ‘on demand’ bus service trial there over 9 months served a grand total of 282 passengers for a cost to taxpayers of $1080 per trip.

Back in Sydney’s Inner West, a year of privatised operation has shown no improvement in on-time performance when compared to previously State Transit run services. Transit Systems failed to meet performance targets every single month, despite the dangerous incentive of awarding drivers $5000 prize money for arriving on time the most. Poor on-time performance was cited as a reason for the privatisation even though it’s clearly caused by roads clogged with too many cars.

WESTCONNEX

No analysis of the present failures of the transport system in NSW is complete without considering the massive waste of the WestConnex tolled motorway. Announced in 2012 at a cost of $10 billion, plans have metastasized in multiple directions north and south for an estimated $45 billion. Induced demand and 50 years of experience of urban motorways around the world teach us that WestConnex will utterly fail to achieve its ill-defined goals. Community opposition has been vociferous but the LNP NSW state government has totally failed to listen.

Since the first stages have opened, congestion has worsened, with drivers avoiding tolls by rat-running or dangerously reversing out of the tunnel entrances. A recent Infrastructure Australia audit claimed that despite the massive spend on road and rail projects, Sydney will become even more paralysed with congestion.

NEOLIBERAL AGENDA

The common thread through all these projects is their goal to put corporate profits first before social benefit. Indeed, transport analyst Dr Chris Standen described WestConnex as “the biggest misuse of public funds for corporate gain in Australia’s history”. They all follow the script explained by Noam Chomsky: “there is a standard technique of privatization, namely defund what you want to privatize. Like when Thatcher wanted to defund the railroads, first thing to do is defund them, then they don't work and people get angry and they want a change. You say okay, privatize them and then they get worse.”

Andrew Constance made the privatisation goal clear in 2017 when he said to a group of business leaders: "I have a very clear view ... that, into the future, government will no longer be providing services when it comes to transport – there's no need. We know that the private sector can deliver transport very effectively."

This goal was also made clear with the passing of the Transport Administration Amendment (Sydney Metro) Bill of 2018. This law was made to prepare the current and future planned Sydney Metro lines for sale to the Hong Kong MTR corporation. Greens MP Dr Mehreen Faruqi said in the upper house debate: “It seems the Sydney Metro will be less of a transport service provider and more of a property developer that also happens to run trains.”

Fortunately though, the community is waking up to this madness. Thanks to the pressure of groups like Ecotransit, Sydenham to Bankstown Alliance and savet3.org, a parliamentary inquiry will be held to investigate the Sydenham to Bankstown line conversion to Metro. Submissions close on October 4th. Journalist and local campaigner Roydon Ng needs help to fund Freedom of Information requests to get a hold of secret government plans about shutting down the Bankstown line. Donations can be made at www.gofundme.com/f/secret-plans-for-t3-bankstown-line-shutdown.