Article: Metro extends unbroken monthly record - late again

[ozbob]

From the Melbourne Age click here!

Metro extends unbroken monthly record - late again

Metro extends unbroken monthly record - late again
CLAY LUCAS
May 31, 2010

FOR the sixth consecutive month since it was hired by the Brumby government to run Melbourne's railways, Metro will fail punctuality targets.

The operator has run almost one in five trains late this month - including a quarter of morning peak-hour services five minutes or more behind schedule, the leaked figures show.

Premier John Brumby told Parliament on the day Metro was selected that its appointment, after ''an exhaustive international tender'', would improve the performance of Melbourne's rail system from day one.

While Metro has decreased the number of trains cancelled, more trains are running late than during the final months of Connex.

Under its eight-year, $8 billion contract with the government, Metro must run 88 per cent of the trains on time.

But internal performance figures published by the operator for this month and seen by The Age show that, to May 27, Metro ran 82.6 per cent of trains on time. Even if every train between Thursday night and tonight's final service runs on schedule, Metro will still fail to meet its performance target.

Speed restrictions on the government's fleet of 36 Siemens trains, because of a series of braking failures on the trains, have hampered Metro's ability to run services to schedule.

Public Transport Minister Martin Pakula has said Metro must do better. Last week he raised his concerns about Metro's performance with the company's chief executive, Andrew Lezala, and chairman Lincoln Leong.

''Punctuality is a key issue and is of major concern to the minister,'' his spokesman, Stephen Moynihan, said.

The government had allocated unprecedented maintenance funding to Metro, and had purchased new trains, he said.

Under its contract, the government has capped fines for Metro at $1 million per month, whereas Connex faced unlimited penalties for poor performance. Metro earns revenue of at least $50 million per month from the government.

Opposition transport spokesman Terry Mulder said Metro had inherited a badly run-down rail network and could not be held responsible for ''a decade of neglect''.

Metro in April had improved its on-time performance, running 84.5 per cent of trains on time - still well under its performance target of 88 per cent.

And it has been spending huge amounts of the money it receives from the government - around $2 million a day - on maintenance and renewal.

But problems with overhead wires coming down, points failures and signalling defects continue to plague the network.

After it releases its official results on June 10, Metro will likely offer compensation of one free daily ticket to customers with a monthly, six-monthly or yearly Metcard or myki card.

Metro spokesman Chris Whitefield said that May had been ''a challenging month''. He would not comment on the figures seen by The Age because ''the month hasn't finished yet, and more importantly because the figures change on a daily basis''.

[#Metro]

Speed restrictions on the government's fleet of 36 Siemens trains, because of a series of braking failures on the trains, have hampered Metro's ability to run services to schedule.

Get rid of those trains. They are trouble!

[stephenk]

Speed restrictions on the government's fleet of 36 Siemens trains, because of a series of braking failures on the trains, have hampered Metro's ability to run services to schedule.

Get rid of those trains. They are trouble!

Given the rather expensive price of new trains, it should be much cheaper to make modifications than completely replacing them. However, I'm not sure about the current state of the legal case connected with these trains.