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The government needs to scrap its re-privatisation of Melbourne trains and trams and get to work on real solutions to the transport crisis, the Public Transport Users Association said today.

“Today’s free travel is a gimmick obscuring the real issue,” said PTUA President Daniel Bowen. “It does no good when you’re about to collapse from heat exhaustion waiting for a train that doesn’t come to know that some people won’t have to buy tickets today. In fact it’s an insult for many long-suffering commuters who have weekly, monthly and yearly tickets – public transport’s most loyal customers.”
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Why does Melbourne’s public transport lurch from one crisis to another? This week’s spate of train and tram cancellations in relentless 40 degree heat made the national news. But it’s hardly the first such crisis to embarrass those in charge.

Continue reading this article from PTUA Secretary Tony Morton on the ABC Unleashed web site.

The City of Greater Geelong Council has stalled again on approving the location of Geelong’s central bus interchange, blocking $80 million of State Government funding for improvements to the whole bus system.

At its meeting on Tuesday night, the Council deferred, for the second time, any decision to approve the recommendation of council officers to return bus stops to the preferred Moorabool Street site.

The Geelong Branch convener of the Public Transport Users Association, Paul Westcott, slammed the Council for the further delay. “Some councillors seem to be pandering to a few Moorabool Street traders at the expense of over two hundred thousand residents of the Geelong region.”
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With large numbers of cancellations causing chaos on the rail network, we’re now tracking the number of daily cancellations on our web site. Watch for the last weekday’s cancellations in the top right of page, and daily totals will be listed here.

Trains in peak hour can easily carry over a thousand people. This means that just eight cancelled trains is the equivalent disruption to closing the Westgate bridge for an hour. In the first three weeks of January, each weekday an average of 40 trains have been cancelled, many of them during the peaks.

While Connex can do better at handling disruptions, it’s critical that the government tell commuters what its solutions are to ensuring the rail network runs reliably, because their multi-billion dollar Victorian Transport Plan released in December is silent on these issues.
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