V/LINE SETS UP SQUAD TO TACKLE LATE TRAINS
V/LINE has established a ‘lateness squad’ to address rampant delays as patronage on the Geelong line reaches critical mass.
New V/Line chairman Jeroen Weimar told the Geelong Advertiser the team was created after more than one million extra trips were taken on the Geelong line last financial year
Mr Weimer, who is also Public Transport Victoria CEO, said the move, combined with a new timetable to be released later this month, meant hope was on the horizon for Geelong’s rail commuters.
Mr Weimer said the recently-established team addressing “poor” punctuality would deliver real results to long-suffering commuters.
“We’ve established a performance team to drive dayto-day performance. It is ready to hit the ground and drive performance of every single one of our 300 train services a day (on the entire network) and look at all the obstructions and issues we get that impact our performance,” Mr Weimar said.
He said the team was established about six weeks ago in light of 1,052,520 additional trips on the Geelong line in 2017-18 when compared to the year before.
“We’ve started to see some improvement from a pretty poor point in May,” he said.
“My absolute focus is on getting the Geelong corridor working as reliably as we possibly can.”
He said a communications team was now embedded in V/Line’s control centre to get prompt messages about disruption to commuters.
Since June 2015, V/Line has failed its punctuality target of 92 per cent in all but two months, which means recently about 300 trains a month are running more than six minutes late.
Mr Weimar said “stop-start investment” in V/Line in past decades meant it struggled to maintain consistent performance.
Meanwhile, a new Geelong timetable to be released on August 26 will include three more weekday peak trains running to or from Waurn Ponds station.
It follows 289 services that have been added to the Geelong line in the past four years, Mr Weimar said.
V/Line data shows trips on the Geelong line have exploded from 3.38 million in 2008/2009 to 8,773,618 million in 2017/18. “We’re sitting on top of the fastest growing regional railway anywhere in Australia — probably the fastest growing railway anywhere in Australia,” Mr Weimar said.
“We’ve not seen that rate of growth on our railway in Australia ever before — certainly not in modern times.”
Trips on the Geelong line accounted for almost 45 per cent of the trips taken on the entire V/Line network in 2016-17.
To meet surging demand, V/Line has doubled train services on the Geelong corridor in four years with services operating between Geelong and Melbourne every 10 minutes in peak times and 20 minutes off-peak.
Opposition transport spokesman David Davis said the Liberal/Nationals would spend $633 million to replace V/Line’s “long-haul rattlers” that make up 40 per cent of the fleet if they win the November election.
“Obviously we need rail work and other things to occur. Huge growth in population is a challenge to manage but it’s no excuse for not maintaining the trains properly,” Mr Davis said.
Mr Weimar said the State Government’s $50 million study into fast rail on the Geelong line will consider electrifying the Southern Cross to Wyndham Vale section to improve performance.