All 12 recommendations made by the Sydney Trains Review’s interim report are to be accepted by the Government.
The review, headed by transport expert, Carolyn Walsh, was set up in April to examine the fundamentals of the train network and found it was neither resilient nor reliable.
It revealed a great many deep-seated problems with the way Sydney Trains were currently operating.
Major backlogs in maintenance resulting from the 2017 timetable changes brought in by the former Government had led to network incidents and continuing inconvenience to passengers.
Minister for Transport, Jo Haylen said she had instructed Acting Secretary of Transport for NSW and Chief Executive of Sydney Trains, Howard Collins to begin work on implementing the recommendations from the report immediately.
They include an expanded passenger-focused team that can respond more flexibly and rapidly to disruption, and mapping out an urgent and large-scale program of works to tackle the five-year backlog of system maintenance.
In addition, the Chief Executive of Sydney Trains will now report directly to the Secretary of Transport for NSW and be represented on Transport for NSW Executive Committees.
Ms Haylen said that while it was clear the ‘black swan’ events of the past few years — floods, fires, COVID-19 — had an impact on performance and reliability, it was not the whole story.
“It’s not in the imagination of the travelling public that the trains have been getting worse. This data proves it,” Ms Haylen said.
“The interim recommendations put forward by the review team are the first steps on the path to restoring the resilience and reliability of the NSW railway,” she said.
