Restore City Rail

The Greens are committed to creating an affordable and seamless public transport network. CityRail is the backbone this network for greater Sydney.

The Greens are calling on the Government to increase CityRail's operational budget by 10% to restore the trains to the pre September 2005 timetable or better.  It should also bring the clearways project forward and complete it as soon as possible.

Commuters need greater incentives to use public transport. Periodicals and weekly tickets that reward commuters for using public transport more frequently should be integrated with  other modes of public transport (buses/ferries/light rail) to reward public transport users for using more than one mode of transport. Public transport is costly if commuters need to use several different services to get to a destination. Some transport trips cost twice as much as others over the same distance. Employers should also receive payroll tax concessions for providing public transport tickets instead of cars to employees.

To make public transport equitable, transport concessions should be extended to low-income Health Care Card holders and holders on low incomes or Temporary Protection Visas. There are currently 145,000 people with Health Care Cards who are not entitled to a concession.

The Greens argue that NSW should be prepared to go into debt to build a world class public transport system to reduce traffic jams, air pollution and our climate change burden.

Background - CityRail Chaos

In the time that Michael Costa was in charge of NSW Transport, commuters across Sydney and rural and regional NSW were taken for a costly ride. We saw the running down of CityRail and CountryLink passenger services, increased fares for bus services and the sell off of rural freight services.

In January 2004, commuters and train drivers bore the brunt of Costa's mismanagement of CityRail, when peak hour trains suffered drastically low on-time running. Lee Rhiannon's office found data on CityRail's website that revealed there was a week in January when more than two thirds of the trains were late. There was nothing short of chaos on our rail lines, yet all the transport minister did was blame train drivers.

The Government's April 2004 mini-budget announcement outlined the expenditure of $1.5 billion to install air-conditioning on 498 train carriages - an absurd priority given the mess the rail system is in. The ongoing problems with CityRail's infrastructure are symptomatic of a Government whose skewed spending priorities are hurting commuters on a daily basis.

The Carr Government announced drastic cuts to the Southern Highlands rail service - fewer services, longer waiting times and changing trains at Campbelltown. In Parliamentary Question Time on May 5, 2004, former Transport Minister Michael Costa revealed his contempt for the people of the Southern Highlands. Minister Costa said only people with "million-dollar weekend retreats" used this line. But it's the young, the elderly, the disabled and the financially disadvantaged who were hardest hit. The Greens labelled the cuts unacceptable, calling on Mr Costa to introduce a comprehensive and efficient CityRail service for the Southern Highlands.

A year later nothing had changed. Trains were running 20-50% later in 2004 than they were in 2003. The chaos continued. There was a litany of mistakes - breakdowns, staff shortages, dodgy trains, signal failures, track works. There are plenty of ways in which our rail system could be made safer and more reliable, nonre of which this government seemed willing to adopt.

In 2005 new timetables were introduced that restored some reliability to the CityRail network by reducing the number of services, making the trains travel slower and stop for longer at each station. The Government has been silent about what it plans to do to restore the network to the old timetable.