By Michael Newhouse
CONFUSION and frustration reigned last week as rail commuters struggled to come to terms with Connex’s decision to cut peak hour services along the already busy Sydenham line.
Commuters heading to work from across Brimbank – from Sydenham to Sunshine – struggled to pack into already crowded peak hour morning trains late last week after Connex cancelled three services along the Sydenham (Watergardens) line.
Last Monday Connex announced it would “indefinitely” cancel 37 train services across Melbourne due to braking issues with its fleet of 31 Siemens trains. The cancellations included the 7.42am from Sydenham to the city, the 8.20am city to Sydenham, and 5.23pm city to Sydenham.
Connex claim the cancellations are a way of bringing more certainty to customers about what trains will run and when, although the operator says there will still be unscheduled cancellations from time to time.
But confusion over services at Watergardens and Sunshine railway stations continued late last week.
When Star visited Watergardens station on Thursday last week the 7.42am train to the city was still listed to run from platform 2.
It was only when Star informed the customer service operator of the mistake that an announcement was put over the loudspeaker to inform a growing crowd of passengers that the service would not run, and asked them to move to the next platform and wait for the next train.
“A lot of people have been pretty frustrated,” Caroline Springs resident Roshan Bheenick told Star last week while waiting at Watergardens station.
Taylors Hill resident Georgie Lappos, who commutes to the CBD most days for work, was heading into the city for the first time since the new schedule came into force.
“I don’t know what to expect – it’s a bit of a guessing game,” Ms Lappos said.
She said her husband took the train the second day of the altered timetable and that “by the time they got halfway down the line a lot of people couldn’t even get on”.
But some Brimbank commuters had become accustomed to late, cancelled and crowded trains, so this latest round of cancellations was frustrating, but not unexpected.
“I actually think most people have got used to accepting it because there’s not much you can do,” said Sunshine local Alastair Wallace, who normally catches the train from Sunshine station each day.
“It’s just going to make it even worse,” he said about the problem of overcrowded trains.
Last week’s indefinite cancellation drew the ire of public transport user groups, who blame the Victorian Government for the public transport failures.
“It is a definite blow to Melbourne’s West given that western Melbourne is one of Melbourne’s fastest growing urban regions, and it’s also the area that the government’s said that they want to concentrate urban growth within,” Public Transport Users Association vice president Alex Makin said last week.
“It seems like they’re trying to pack more people in, and yet actually take services away.”
He said the government was lucky no one was injured as a result of the faulty Siemens trains, which were running through the notorious St Albans intersection until last week’s cancellations.
Mr Makin called for the purchase of a back-up train fleet for situations like these.
Connex spokesman Andrew Cassidy admitted it was an inconvenience to customers but said the operator tried to spread the cancellation across Melbourne’s rail network.
As for when services would return to normal, Mr Cassidy could not say.
“We don’t have an estimate and it would be counterproductive to give people a guesstimate that might turn out to be wrong.”
