Re: On time running of CityRail suburban services

["Chris Downs" <cvdowns@hermes.net.au>]

Most off-peak trains are late?

Me thinks you have the same jinx one of my aunties has.  If she travels by
train its late (so she says).  Needless to say I've never travelled with
her!

I travel Hazelbrook - Penrith am and the reverse pm on a daily basis.

The am trains I catch are invariably on time within a couple on minutes at
Hazelbrook (departures: 0607, 0706, 0724, 0745, 0816) and on time at Penrith
(there is recovery time of about 3 minutes between Lapstone and Emu Plains
although its not shown in the working timetable).

The Penrith - Hazelbrook trip is a little less reliable (departures: 1648,
1732, 1847, 1920).  The most common delay is the local to Penrith running a
few minutes (literally) late.

As for off-peak services I can't remember the last time one was more than a
few minutes late.  The only truely late train I've had recently (the last
couple of months) was an early evening Central - East Hills service last
Friday night.  This includes some Penrith - City travel and observations at
Penrith.  Pleasingly the same goes for fairly recent work travels in
Brisbane/Gold Coast, Melbourne and Adelaide.

And I don't think Sydney's service is bad at all:
Two colleagues left my Parramatta office 5 minutes before me last Monday at
about 1540 and drove back to our Penrith office (3 minutes walk from Penrith
station).  I walked to Parramatta station (5+ minutes), waited 3 minutes for
a mountains service and beat them to the Penrith office by 5 minutes.  They
made no intermediate stops in their car.  If I'd caught an all stations
service our travel times would have been closer to equal.  And these guys
travelled most of the distance on the M4.

To have captured the disbelieving look on the face of one of them on film
when they arrived at Penrith.

At the end of the day if you really want to know how bad or good the service
is, keep stats.  If you're honest the bias disappears and you'll get a true
picture whether the service is good, bad or indifferent.

Chris



Hubert Lam wrote in message <7p0toi$mop$1@news1.mpx.com.au>...
>i know it's  5 min for intercity 3 min for suburban
>
>
>what a load of bull though...most offpeak trains, as i mentioned are late!
>
>
>Railway Rasputin <bob@fastlink.com.au> wrote in message
>37B29F62.5B3D04BA@fastlink.com.au">news:37B29F62.5B3D04BA@fastlink.com.au...
>
>Hubert Lam wrote:
>Can anyone back Simon Lane's claim of having a 92.6% on-time running of
>suburban services as of June 1999 (SMH Letters 11/8/1999) ? It seems that
>75% of all off-peak trains from the west are late!
>Hubert
>Trains are not considered late until 5 min after timetabled time. Also
>trains which are running late get transposed and are then considered on
>time.
>There are a few other tricks that they use.
>rgds
>
>