Article: Increase in cancelled rail services revealed

[ozbob]

From Courier Mail click here!

Increase in cancelled rail services revealed

Increase in cancelled rail services revealed
Article from: The Courier-Mail

By Steven Wardill

April 17, 2008 12:00am

QUEENSLAND Rail cancelled almost 1000 Citytrain services over the past five months, figures released last night have revealed.

The figures show that on 245 occasions between November and March the State Government-owned rail company had to resort to hiring buses and taxis in order to get its commuters to their destinations.

The biggest months for cancellations were November and December last year when 258.9 and 508.3 Citytrain services were cancelled respectively. If a train does not make it to all scheduled stops, it is recorded as a fraction of one service.

This compared with 64.5 cancellations in November 2006 and 95.2 in December 2006.

Overall, Queensland Rail figures showed 99.41 per cent of 104,821 services over the period were provided.

That excluded cancellations where alternative transport was provided or instances of "force majeure", when services were cancelled because of incidents outside QR's control.

CityTrain's woes have added to the meltdown occurring in public transport services throughout southeast Queensland.

Buses routinely leave passengers behind because they are full while the system's co-ordinating authority, TransLink, admits it does not know if buses runs on time.

The release of the figures last night came after Transport Minister John Mickel refused to hand them over last week following an Opposition question on notice.

Opposition transport spokesman Tim Nicholls said figures for the first third of 2007-08 showed increases of up to 500 per cent in unscheduled train cancellations.

"The fact the Minister now won't release the latest figures suggests the spike in train cancellations is continuing, the problems haven't been fixed and he has been all talk and no action," he said.

However Mr Mickel ridiculed an Opposition commitment to ensure all train services run on time.

[ozbob]

I am not sure if this is quite correct.  I think cancelled services for track closures/upgrades/maintenance may be included in the figures which does give a false impression.  Just from day to day travel observations the level of cancellations is no where near the number last year due to the 'chronic flu outbreak' 

In any case more trains and crew are needed!