The reasons Sydney’s rail network is set to worsen in the future

Delays and cancellations to trains on Sydney’s troubled rail network will worsen without a maintenance blitz to recover from a surging backlog in defects, an interim review has found.

The review commissioned by the state Labor government into repeated failures across Sydney’s rail network lays much of the blame on a major change to the rail timetable, and industrial action by workers last year delaying fixes.

Transport Minister Jo Haylen said the review had shown that Sydney’s rail network was neither reliable nor resilient, and the government would accept all the report’s 12 recommendations, including a “maintenance blitz” over the next 12 months.

Sydney’s rail network has a major maintenance backlog, which poses a threat to the reliability of train services. Credit: Kate Geraghty

“The report also makes clear that if we don’t act now, there will be more incidents and more severe incidents,” she said.

She ruled out a cut to train services or an increase to the maintenance budget by the government to resolve the problems. “We are operating in constrained financial times,” she said, adding that the maintenance blitz needed to be done without increasing staff levels.

Transport Minister Jo Haylen has ruled out a cut to train services.Credit: Louise Kennerley

Opposition transport spokeswoman Natalie Ward accused the new government of heaping blame on a rail timetable change six years ago to hide the fact it did not have a plan.

“We invested $4 billion into the infrastructure. We’re seeing no investment from this government,” she said.

The report found that the reliability and resilience of the Sydney Trains network has been “fragile” since the introduction of a new rail timetable in 2017, which led to widespread cancellations and delays to services in the months after it was implemented.

“[The new timetable] was far too tight to effectively maintain services, provide resilience following incidents and to give adequate access for maintenance,” it said.

It warns that the performance of Sydney Trains’ rail infrastructure is “likely to worsen” under forecast maintenance activity, and that a major blitz to fix a growing backlog in defects is urgently needed.

Sydney’s major train stations were flooded with commuters in March when the system’s digital radios went down.Credit: Brook Mitchell, Sam Mooy, Wolter Peeters

Figures show that the backlog of infrastructure-related defects has soared to about 37,000 in April this year, from about 23,000 in December 2018. At present, there are 1265 critical defects on the rail network which need to be inspected every seven days.

While much of the blame is sheeted at the rail timetable, the report said there was a “sudden and significant increase” in the backlog of infrastructure inspections from mid-2021 to mid-2022 due to the prolonged industrial dispute between the former government and rail unions.

While safety performance has “been good”, the report said underlying risk would increase if the problems facing Sydney Trains were not fixed.

Sydney Trains chief executive Matt Longland said the City Circle line beneath the CBD, and inner parts of the rail network, were causing the most significant reliability problems.

Longland said the challenge was to “do more productive work” when lines were shut for weekend maintenance, and to focus on replacing of old equipment which impacted service reliability. “This is about getting more staff on each of those trackwork weekends,” he said.

Sydney’s suburban train system suffered three major disruptions in March, including the failure of a critical digital radio system that forced the shutdown of the entire network for more than an hour, disrupting 250,000 commuters during the evening peak.

Transport for NSW acting secretary Howard Collins, who was the boss of Sydney Trains in 2017 when the timetable was last changed significantly, said he accepted criticism in the review that it was the primary cause of the problems.

“It was a tough decision at the time [to introduce a new timetable],” he said. “We felt at the time that there was not much choice. Now we have the opportunity to get the railway back on track.”

The next major change to Sydney’s rail timetable will take place next year when the main section of the $20 billion Metro City and Southwest line between Chatswood and Sydenham is due to open.

The report has also recommended a plan be developed for a rail operations centre at Green Square to resolve “identified shortcomings”, and that oversight of intercity trains, which operate on lines from Sydney to Wollongong, Newcastle and the Blue Mountains, be shifted from NSW TrainLink to Sydney Trains.

A final report from the review into Sydney Trains is due in October.

The Morning Edition newsletter is our guide to the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up here.