“At what point do heads need to roll so we start seeing outcomes instead of excuses?”
Transport Minister John Graham said the government had got the message that reliability of services on Sydney’s rail network had to improve.
“That’s what people expect, and that’s what they deserve to expect,” he said. “We want a relentless focus on reliability because that’s what makes a big difference to people as they move around the city.”
A review led by infrastructure expert Kerry Schott was scathing of Sydney Trains last month.Credit: Oscar Colman
The latest figures also show that since 2018, infrastructure-related defects on the rail network reached the highest levels between April and August this year. June was the worst month, recording 39,634 defects, followed by July at 38,932 and August at 38,912.
The 2023 review found that more than half of the major incidents that caused delays were due to rail infrastructure – such as tracks, signalling and electrical wiring and systems – and recommended a maintenance blitz. It resulted in the government rolling out a “rail repair plan” over 12 months, which was funded by shifting around the existing maintenance budget.
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While it helped improve infrastructure performance for a time, another review released last month, which was scathing of Sydney Trains, found that the progress was not sustained after the repair plan was completed in June last year. It led to high-priority defects reaching a record high in June this year at more than 4700.
Sydney Trains said it had recorded 31 major incidents – those that result in at least 10,000 “train delay minutes” – since the start of 2023. Of those, 42 per cent were due to infrastructure problems, followed by 23 per cent because of operational issues and 10 per cent due to weather-related impacts on infrastructure.
The rail operator said the frequency of incidents in the year to June was set back by industrial action between November and February, as well as severe weather.
The worsening delays come as new Mariyung trains started operating on the Blue Mountains line between Lithgow and Sydney on Monday, after a five-year delay to entering service.
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Sydney Trains said the rollout of the $4 billion Mariyung fleet and retirement of decades-old V-set and K-set trains would improve fleet reliability, as well as help reduce vandalism and break-ins to cabs.
Chief executive Matt Longland said the V-set trains were likely to be retired from the Blue Mountains line by the middle of next year, following the full rollout of new Mariyung trains on that intercity line.
The new trains will be pressed into service on the South Coast line between Sydney and the Illawarra next year, although Longland conceded that it was a “complicated process to work through to ensure that we’ve got everything ready for the rollout of the train”.
He has previously said that the new trains were likely to start carrying passengers on the South Coast line in the second quarter of 2026.
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