Article: Problems grand central

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Problems grand central

Problems grand central
CLAY LUCAS
April 24, 2010

IT WASN'T being evacuated from a burning train at Eaglemont Station this week that broke Eleisha Marchione's spirit as a commuter. Nor was it the 30-minute wait for another service as she and 200 fellow passengers watched firefighters hose down the train's smouldering motor. She could even let slide the two late trains she had been unable to board that morning because they were full.

The moment happened when, already an hour late, she reached Flinders Street Station and was ordered off the supposed City Loop train. Marchione, who has a broken foot, was directed from platform one to three. She limped there, to be told by station staff she should have stayed put. ''By the time we got back to platform one,'' she says, ''the train had already left.''

Marchione has caught the train from Heidelberg to the city for 15 years, and says problems with Melbourne's embattled train system have escalated since new operator Metro took over from Connex in November. ''It is the worst it has ever been,'' she says.

Marchione is right. Last month, 20 per cent of trains ran late. Government reports produced since the Kennett era show it was, at the very least, the worst result for late-running since 1993. Go back to 1926 and, according to Kristin Otto's recent history of Melbourne, Capital, less than 1 per cent of trains ran late.

And this week, Metro - which was last year awarded about $8 billion over eight years to fix the city's ailing rail network - recorded another bad week, with about 15 per cent of trains running late. Since taking over from Connex on November 30, Metro has averaged about 1 per cent of services cancelled. This is roughly the same level as Connex - but with many more trains running so late, or so crowded, that they might as well be cancellations.

Plus, the operator is calling for millions more in government money, with leaked information suggesting it is considering laying off staff to make up the shortfall.

It is a long way from last September, when Premier John Brumby, buoyed by glowing Transport Department assessments of Metro (majority-owned by Hong Kong's renowned MTR), told Parliament the company would deliver ''the non-negotiables - punctuality, reliability, safety, first-rate customer service and cleanliness. Passengers will notice changes from day one.'' Instead, Metro's most public achievement to date may well have been making Connex look good.

Many of the problems were not of Metro's making. The company inherited an antiquated infrastructure and unwieldy organisational structure - both of which it has set about trying to fix. In its first seven months it will have spent $137 million of public money replacing rotting wooden sleepers with concrete ones, replacing circuit boxes and re-tensioning overhead wires that sag in the heat.

It has also restructured the organisation. Previously three separate companies were responsible for maintaining rail stock and tracks - an administrative mess that encouraged finger-pointing when things went wrong. The new structure brings all responsibility into one company, with chief executive Andrew Lezala at its head. Getting it to work right is proving difficult.

Meanwhile, each day brings unforeseen problems: a minor signalling fault, say, will delay the Werribee line's busiest morning service by 10 minutes, meaning a train designed to carry 800 people squashes in 1200, who take 30 seconds longer to get on and off at each station. This holds up trains behind it, and those on the Williamstown, Craigieburn and Sydneham lines.

But more serious failures are occurring than did under Connex: overhead power lines collapse, degraded track circuits pack up, and more trains break down (including at least three catching fire. Not that customers would know; Tuesday's Eaglemont emergency was announced down the Hurstbridge line as ''a technical fault'').

Perhaps one of Metro's earliest errors - particularly in light of the cultural differences between Hong Kong and Melbourne - was in replacing senior Connex managers, who at least knew how to keep the system ticking along most of the time.

Former chief executive Bruce Hughes left after five decades working on Melbourne's rails. General manager of operations Chris White, who held timetabling together, departed as did general manager Alan Chaplin. Head of customer service Geoff Young went too. All had local knowledge. It is no surprise that several former Connex managers, such as the former deputy chief operating officer, have since been offered lucrative work with Metro in a bid to help get things back on track.

But in the meantime, delivery of the city's desperately needed new trains has fallen months behind the schedule promised by Brumby, thanks largely to rancorous relations between Metro and the rail union's locomotive division. The relationship with its train drivers is worse than during Connex's time, quite an achievement considering Connex chairman Jonathan Metcalfe in January last year accused his drivers of deliberately causing thousands of cancellations in a scorching summer.

As a last resort, Metro has offered a 2.5 per cent bonus to staff if they can improve on the same month last year.

But problems with the union could worsen after minutes of a leaked Metro management meeting last month showed the operator had promised to ''collect evidence regarding driver slowdown''. The minutes also show the company is considering retrenching staff to meet the massive cost of running the trains.

''They thought they could apply the Hong Kong experience here,'' says one insider. ''They don't have unions in Hong Kong like the ones we have here.''

Rail union secretary Trevor Dobbyn says Metro, despite its promises, has underestimated the cost of running a system that is chronically understaffed, ''and they are now trying to save money by reducing staff numbers''. He says Metro's reputation convinced too many it would provide an instant fix. ''But they have underestimated the complexity of running Melbourne's train system,'' he says.

In Hong Kong, just 0.1 per cent of trains run late (and ''late'' there is two minutes; under Melbourne's contract, it is five). But Hong Kong, says Dobbyn, has a simpler point-to-point metro, with more reliable trains and tracks. Melbourne's complex hub-and-spoke network - where all 15 suburban lines go through one central point - ''is far more complex and demanding than they thought'', he says.

Metro has also tried to import solutions that might work in Hong Kong but haven't gone down well in Melbourne. A plan for Flinders Street platform staff to wield white flags to help move trains through the station quicker, by signalling to drivers and communicating with passengers, was withdrawn after three days after concerns it could create dangers for drivers - and due to the level of aggression from passengers.

Even with the $2 million a day Metro is spending to fix problems, improvements won't happen as quickly as travellers want - and maybe not soon enough to neutralise transport as an election issue, come November 27.

Metro boss Andrew Lezala is acutely aware of the political ramifications. An operations expert, he is used to concentrating on running a railway, not a media campaign, nor dealing with an angry government. In a leaked email to his senior managers last month, he noted that until the election his job would be managing the company's reputation - and, by association, that of the Brumby government.

''For the next seven months, we are going to be a main focus of the media as we run up to the state elections. I will need to spend an increasing amount of time on external issues,'' he wrote, before appointing a former chief of Melbourne's public transport system, a choice believed to have been influenced by government.

Simon Lane worked, with reported success, in Melbourne's then Public Transport Corporation from 1994 to '97, before running train systems in Sydney and Singapore. For the past two years he has been one of the Transport Department's most trusted consultants. Now he will work as second-in-charge at Metro, until just after the election. At the government's urging, Metro last week hired influential public relations agency Inside PR, and has plans for an ad campaign later this year.

Embarrassingly early into its eight-year contract, Metro recently submitted a plan to the government to improve its performance - a bid to pre-empt its being ordered to deliver such a plan under the terms of the contract it signed last August. ''We expect this plan to be implemented and for it to result in sustained improvements,'' department spokeswoman Kirsten Harvey Taylor said this week. (The department rejected an Age request for a copy.)

But there is little the government can now do to pressure Metro. Thanks to the contract, the fines for poor performance are capped at $1 million a month (Connex averaged fines of $2 million a month last year). These fines are a pittance compared with the $50-60 million the government pays to Metro each month. Metro, meanwhile, has gone back to the government seeking tens of millions of dollars more, and quickly, if things are to improve.

Public Transport Minister Martin Pakula - whose department oversaw the spending of $60 million of public money on dumping Connex and hiring Metro - denies that Metro has demanded extra funding. But he concedes it may have asked to bring projects forward, which some argue amounts to the same thing. ''If they want to bring forward [funding] and make a case to government for that, they are entitled to ask,'' Pakula says.

He says the overall performance of the rail network since Metro took over is ''disappointing. They haven't had the best of starts. But they know that - they are under no illusions.''

For its part, the opposition knows it is on to a winner by talking about public transport at every opportunity until November. But it is yet to put forward any alternatives, and will not do so until after next month's budget.

Melburnians, meanwhile, are becoming less willing to accept the same excuses and promises of improvement offered for a decade by Labor and the Transport Department. In part, this is because the system is now so well used. In 1999, there were 124 million trips on the city's trains. Last year, there were 214 million.

Complaints about crowded and late trains are not unique to Melbourne. Between 2004 and 2008, annual rail patronage in New York jumped 3.3 per cent a year. In San Francisco it was 4.2 per cent a year, in London 3.1 per cent, in Vienna 4.6 per cent. In Melbourne, however, patronage has jumped a thumping 10.5 per cent a year for four years.

And the government cannot use the excuse it never saw it coming: it pledged in 2002 to get 20 per cent of passengers using public transport by 2020. The failing system is a sure sign the government never believed its own spin.

For commuters such as Eleisha Marchione, who are amazed things could have become worse than the situation under Connex, they have to improve - rapidly.

Metro's boss knows it too. ''For the people who are mourning the passing of Connex, they need to wait and see,'' Lezala says. ''We have got more to do but it is going to get better.''

Clay Lucas is transport reporter.