Article: $10m to lift train service

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$10m to lift train service

$10m to lift train service
Article from: Herald Sun

Geraldine Mitchell

May 09, 2008 12:00am

TRAINS will be cleaner, more staff will roam city stations and commuters will have more room to move in carriages under a $10 million plan by Connex to improve its customer service.

The biggest one-off investment by the private rail operator will include:

AN extra 32 staff at North Melbourne and all city loop stations. The staff will be highly visible in fluorescent vests and will carry mobile technology advising of changes to train services.

THE replacement of seat covers on more than a third of its fleet.

MORE regular cleaning of trains at city stations.

HANDLES will be installed in carriages to give commuters more room.

A CUSTOMER information centre will be built at Flinders St station to respond to the record high number of commuters.

MORE six-car trains will run every day to 7pm on most lines.

Connex will also modify the layout of one of its trains by removing seats near doors, providing more handles on existing seats and creating new storage areas for bikes, to determine the best way to ease the crush in carriages.

The changes will be made to various carriages and the train will be trialled across the network by October.

Connex chief executive officer Bruce Hughes said the major investment was not required under its contract with the State Government but was in direct response to commuters' demands.

Mr Hughes said its series of open meetings with the public last year determined the changes.

"We hope that people appreciate that we have listened to them and we have garnered that information," he said.

"We can't do everything but we think we can do something, so we've picked out the most prevalent things that are in people's minds."

Mr Hughes said the next series of its Meet our Managers program, starting at Parliament station next Thursday, would determine the next phase of changes.

It comes after the Herald Sun revealed in March that Connex was considering removing seats from the back of carriages to provide more standing room for passengers.

Mr Hughes said the changes were necessary to cope with the unprecedented patronage growth of 23 per cent in the past two years.

He said more than 189 million trips were made last year averaging about 616,000 a day.