Trains continue to fall short of targets

Passenger trains on the TraralgonMelbourne line continued to fall short of the targeted performance during December.

During all of the first six months of the current financial year trains have failed to reached the targeted 92 per cent reaching their destinations within six minutes.

In December the figure was 82.2 per cent, the worst performances among the “short distance” V/Line regional train routes. However, all came up short of the target. Since last July punctuality on the Traralgon line has ranged from a low of 80.1 per cent – four out of five trains – arriving within six minutes of schedule – in November to a high of 87.8 in August.

Reliability of trains - that is, the number of scheduled services that ran – were between 97 and 98 per cent over each of the six months, exceeding the 96 per cent target.

On the long distance Gippsland service – “The Gippslander” – that operates between Bairnsdale and Melbourne punctuality slumped to 65.3 per cent.

Only two of three trains on the route reached their destinations within the targeted 11 minutes of scheduled arrival times.

According to the monthly statistics provided by V/Line the average number of passengers on peak morning and evening TraralgonMelbourne services left some seating available.

On the four morning peak services from Traralgon arriving in the city between seven and nine am the number of seats occupied at the busiest points on the route varied between 55 and 73 per cent.

Of the afternoon peak services the 4.16 and 4.58pm departures from Southern Cross had an average of 94 and 90 per cent of seats occupied on the busiest parts of the trips.

The figure dropped to 61 per cent on the service leaving Melbourne at 5.37pm.

V/Line points out that the numbers are averages that reflect any increase or decrease in carriages during the month and average seating capacity can fluctuate on a daily basis due to changes to carriage configurations.