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Total Cityrail stuff up
The Concord West derailment certainly put a
spanner in Cityrail's evening peak programme. Since they had all day to
plan for it why was it such a total stuff up? I arrived at North Sydney
Station at 5:15pm to find platform 4 packed (generally a rare occurence).
In the following half hour before I could finally get on a train, 3 Gosford/
Wyong/ Newcastle Interurban trains, 2 all-stations to Gordon and only 1 Hornsby
train went through. All the Interurban trains would have been less than a
quarter full while thousands of north shore commuters were left waiting at
Wynyard, Town Hall and North Sydney. One of the Inturban trains was the
two car St Mary's - Central Coast service (What a waste of peak hour track
space!). All the suburban trains were packed. I finally boarded a
Gordon service which had some spare standing room only because so many had come
in a comparatively short space of time. At Gordon the next train was
followed by another less than quarter full 8 car Interurban which was followed
by yet another service terminating at Gordon. Finally a Hornsby service
came and I was able to squeeze on. This train terminated in platform 1 at
Hornsby. "Customers" for all stations to Berowra trains
were told to move from platform 1 to 2. While hundreds of people were
trying to go up and over the stairs to reach platform 2 a Berowra service came
in on platform 2 and left! People were still pouring down the stairs to
get on this train and most would be probably 1/2 to 1hr later than normal and
yet Cityrail sends the train on its merry way! The impression given is
that Cityrail think they are running a big model train set and seem to have
forgotten they are supposed to be providing a service for people.
It was absolutely absurd and rude for Cityrail to be running generally empty
Interuban services past thousands of stranded commuters. The number of
Interurban trains running on the north shore should have been rationised.
These trains could have stopped at some stations where their are platform staff
that could have assisted the guard with passenge loading. It was also silly to
have so many Gordon services in comparison to Hornsby services especially when
so many Main North line commuters would have been going to Hornsby to catch
Epping shuttle trains. And these people are charged with transport
planning for the Olympics - Ughhhh!!!!!