Article: VLine chief promises better services

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VLine chief promises better services

VLine chief promises better services
MELISSA JENKINS
October 6, 2009 - 8:09PM

The head of Victoria's regional rail network has promised commuters VLine will do better than last summer, when 362 train services were cancelled in less than a month.

When quizzed on repeated failures to meet punctuality targets in Geelong, Ballarat and Bendigo, VLine chief executive Rob Barnett told a parliamentary inquiry on Tuesday, punctuality targets were higher than in NSW.

He said VLine had a plan to deal with the searing heat between January 13 and February 7 this year, in which 93 per cent of the 5,341 scheduled services ran, with 362 cancelled.

Of the cancelled services, 53 were pulled due to air conditioning failures. Nearly all of the cancelled services were replaced with coaches.

Mr Barnett said this summer, VLine would endeavour to improve communication between the Southern Cross yard in Melbourne and the station's control room.

"At times we struggled with the on the ground communication at Southern Cross station and metropolitan stations where it was unclear what was happening," he told the inquiry.

"This is an area we certainly need to improve."

Mr Barnett said the only other regional rail network in Australia that publicly reports is Countrylink in NSW, which aims to deliver 78 per cent of services within 10 minutes of the scheduled time.

"We think we are doing well," he said.

"We need to do better, we want to do better and we can do better."

Between October 2008 and March 2009 there were 49 days of hot weather speed restrictions, limiting trains to 90km/h, out of a total of 182 days.

Mr Barnett said slowing trains down during hot weather was common practice across the world.

"We only slow the trains down when there is a safety need to do so."

Opposition transport spokesman Terry Mulder has called on VLine to reduce hot weather speed restrictions in areas where there are concrete sleepers.

Mr Barnett said VLine would not introduce a summer timetable but customers could access service change updates by signing up to an SMS alert system.

He said VLine was working with local councils and the CFA to manage vegetation around 3,700km of track before the bushfire season.

VLine's most recent performance results show it failed to meet the 92 per cent punctuality target in four out of five short distance journey categories in August.

Ten per cent of services on the Geelong line were more than five minutes late. Only 88.5 per cent of services ran within five minutes of the scheduled time on the Bendigo line, 84.6 per cent on the Gippsland line and 89.2 per cent on the Seymour line.

The Ballarat service exceeded the punctuality target, with 93.6 per cent of services arriving within five minutes of the scheduled time.

The upper house select committee on train services is due to deliver its final report by March.

? 2009 AAP