Re: City Rail Trackwork Notices

[<glillic@msn.com.au>]

Bruce wrote in message <371981A3.9E0F3242@ibm.net>...
>
>
>glillic@msn.com.au wrote:
>
>> snip
>
>
>
>> Please City Rail or Rail Access Corp, lets get back to treating customers
>> like human beings instead of something that makes it necessary to run
>> passenger trains at all.
>>
>>
>
>RAC DONOT run trains...that is purely an operator function, and the bid
pocess
>for a possession in the metro area starts 60 weeks ahead, so there is all
the
>time in the world for cityrail to let its customers know.
>And onother thing
>
>How do you expect track maintenance to be carried out. At some stage it
must be,
>and a lot of the city system has been let run down too far over the years
>already, just to because of the sort of complaints you are making.
>
>
>B. Greening
>

Bruce,

You snipped off the main point of my posting. I have no problem with Rail
Access Corp closing down the Sydney area tracks for weekend maintenance - we
all want a safe railway!

My comment was centred around the apparent lack of clear and forward notice
of the tracks affected so that potential customers can plan their weekend
travel without suddenly finding a lack of trains at their local station on
Saturday morning. As I said previously, before Easter there were well
presented LARGE notices posted so that regular commuters could see well
ahead EVERY track affected and details of the replacement bus service. There
was no such evidence up until Friday at the two major stations that I
regularly use. However a subsequent post to this NG indicated that such
notices were on the North Shore Line!!

Yes, RAC do NOT run trains - they are responsible for the maintenance of the
track they control. CityRail runs the trains when RAC lets them. It is
CityRail's responsibility to adequately inform their customers of
interuptions, however RAC could also help with the public relations if they
saw fit!!

Another point. It was not all that long ago - pre RAC - that the government
suggested that one advantage of cutting out all-night rail services was that
more maintenance would be possible at night thus avoiding weekend shutdowns.
The only problem with that was that nobody asked the engineers and others
whether that was practical!!

Geoff