Re: [NSW] - hilarious SMH article

["Hubert Lam" <hubert@imap4.com>]

"David Burns" <dpburns@veal.optushome.com.au> wrote in message
39DAFAAE.465DEB54@veal.optushome.com.au">news:39DAFAAE.465DEB54@veal.optushome.com.au...
| Comments below
|
| Hubert Lam wrote:
|
| > I agree with you totally about the Main North line. i've travelled on
| > it (almost) every single school day for 6 years now (and am about to
| > finish the last trips!! HSC coming up!). However you must appreciate
| > that the Northern line runs at capacity in the peaks, especially with
| > the 15min Central Coast to Syd Terminal trains. It'll be hard to CR to
| > put anything else on this line without having the Central Coast trains
| > either making additional stops (makes Coasties angry) or additional
| > overtakings of slow suburban trains (a real compromise on
| > reliability!). That's why the all stops in the morning and afternoon
| > only go to Epping, that's to minimise any problems with the overtaking
| > business that only occurs on the Main North (and possibly nowhere else).
| >
|
| My immediate answer is that the Government should look for modifications
| to increase capacity on some of the critical parts of the network. Again
using the
| northern line as an example (and everyone else jump in on the other lines)
| extending the down relief (the freight line) from Rhodes to West Ryde
| (note that the bridge over the Parra river already has pylons for a third
line)
| would reduce some (not all) of the pressure.

There'd be no room between West Ryde and Meadowbank for the relief line to
go through. Of course anything can be done with sufficient willpower and
$$$.



|
| I appreciate that this will take years (eg. look at how long the
Merrylands Y link
| took to build). But as far as I can see projects such as this aren't even
on the
| horizon...
|
| >
| > I think the article meant "reduction in service" in places where it now
| > seems unjustifyable--and the Northern line is NOT one of them. Every
| > single off-peak train the runs towards the City is very well loaded, at
| > times it even means people have to stand until Strathfield. The
| > Northern line is sure to get extra services in the off peak, as the
| > half hourly timetable has been around for ... hmm...much longer than i
| > can even remember (it obviously was already there 6 yrs ago!).
|
| I hope you're right - but what if they decide the upper northern only
needs
| one service per hour and terminate every second train at Epping?
| There are quite a few places where CityRail may think about doing this.
| And people will jump in their cars...

Even terminate every second train at Strathfield wouldn't be a bad idea coz
there are just so many services from the south/west into the city. Could
make the main north a bit like a yo-yo between Berowra and Strathfield.

|
| One of the key problems facing CityRail is that they are unable to track
the
| many individual train journeys made in order to understand both how people
use
| the system and even more importantly how this changes over time.
| These problems result from the fact that the ticketing system does not
provide sufficiently
| accurate information about where people start *and* end their journeys.
| So how does CityRail work out where services can be reduced?

the problem is with off peak trains, people like crowding into the middle
carriages, when the front/end carriages can be completely empty.

|
| dB
|