Driver Training 1

["Mr X" <Rail.bob.eastwestfreight@foothills.net>]

'Minor incidents' plague city trains

By ROBERT WAINWRIGHT, Transport Writer

Sydney's beleaguered rail chiefs, trying to make trains run safely and on
time, are battling hundreds of "minor incidents", including trains
overshooting or missing platforms and being sent the wrong way.

The mishaps are revealed in figures obtained by the Herald - a day after
revelations that more than $2.3million had been paid in performance bonuses
to executives and staff at the three rail authorities in the past four
years.

The new statistics, compiled by the Rail Access Corporation, show that
between last Friday and Tuesday there were almost 240 incidents regarded as
minor, including 85 on Monday alone. This week there have been at least 10
instances in which drivers have either failed to stop at a station or
overshot a platform.

In one, at Austinmer on Friday, taxis had to be called to retrieve
passengers, and in another, at Mortdale on Monday, passengers were locked in
a train as it was driven into a siding.

Other problems were encountered at Lidcombe, Penshurst, Eastwood, Bardwell
Park, Allowah, Eastwood and Padstowe stations. In reports to officials,
drivers said they had been unaware of stopping patterns or had simply
forgotten to stop.

More serious were two incidents on Tuesday, within 11 minutes of each
another, in which trains travelled on the wrong track. The first happened at
7.59pm, when a train left Granville on the western line to Penrith rather
than the southern line to Liverpool.

At 8.10pm, a train travelled to Sydenham instead of the airport.


The incidents do not include signal and maintenance problems or breakdowns
that have haunted CityRail's on-time statistics this year.

Though there have been improvements, on-time running continues to lag behind
official targets.

CityRail figures for last month show the average on-time running for
suburban trains was just 82.5 per cent, well below the target of 92 per
cent, and barely above the low point of 77 per cent in April.

Morning peak-hour services averaged 87.7 per cent but the afternoon peak
hour continued to be the main problem, averaging just 77.3 per cent over the
month.

The morning peak hour on Friday, June 16, was 97.34 per cent, but it was
more than offset by the 39.7 per cent of the afternoon before, when the
system was brought to a standstill for several hours because of signal
failures.

By comparison, intercity trains averaged just over 90 per cent last month,
with morning peak hour services running almost 94 per cent on-time but
evening peak hour dropping to 86.6 per cent.

The Opposition spokesman on transport, Mr Barry O'Farrell, said he was
concerned about the level of human error.

"It is a horrifying set of figures and again confirms worries about
efficiency and fears about the level of driver training," he said. "What is
worse is that it comes at a time when we are going into the Olympics, with
20-hour-a-day peak operations and three times the normal level of
passengers."