Brisbane train delays ’not good enough’

UPDATE: AN inquiry into Queensland Rail’s embarrassing train debacle must be broadened to find out what’s “rotten at the core” of the organisation, the state opposition says.

AN inquiry into Queensland Rail’s embarrassing train debacle must be broadened to find out what’s “rotten at the core” of the organisation, the state opposition says.

Opposition transport spokesman Andrew Powell says the inquiry investigating a train crew shortage is too narrow and must also examine culture and “systematic problems” within QR.

“Clearly there is something genuinely rotten at the core of Queensland Rail and we need to get to the bottom of it,” he said on Friday, a day after more commuter chaos in the southeast.

Mr Powell said if the premier won’t sack Transport Minister Stirling Hinchilffe, she should appoint an additional two commissioners to the inquiry headed by Phillip Strachan.

Mr Hinchliffe has resisted calls to resign over the train driver and guard shortage, which led to major cancellations in October.

Train passengers wait at Central Station Thursday night. Pic: Jack Tran

Commuters endured long delays and had to resort to taxis and Uber on Thursday after a series of infrastructure mishaps, which started when a weld failed at Yerong around 4.30am.

Queensland Rail has promised to refund commuters more than $300,000 over the debacle and Ms Palaszczuk has taken aim at the organisation for not doing enough to inform travellers of delays.

Mr Powell said it was not good enough that commuters were left stranded, missed flights and had to travel north to go south.

“What we are clearly seeing is cultural problems, for this to be impacting on not only staffing, planning, driver training but now maintenance and the inability to have back-up plans,” he said.

He said Queensland Rail was running efficiently when the Liberal National Party was in government and was certain the train fiasco would become an election issue as commuters were already fed-up.

OVERNIGHT: MORNING train commuters will be refunded the cost of their tickets, after infrastructure faults caused major ­delays and left peak hour ­travellers stranded yesterday.

In the latest debacle to hit Queensland Rail, customers were left waiting up to an hour as a “confluence of infrastructure mishaps and misfires” ­delayed and cancelled several train services.

The issues continued again during afternoon peak hour ­despite customers being assured of no further interruptions after the morning’s fiasco.

Many morning commuters were left waiting on board trains and platforms for more than an hour without any warning of what was going on.

QR network executive general manager Tim Ripper said the chaotic morning was caused by a number of “rare events”.

“These are very rare events for our network,” he said.

“We’ve done a lot of work over the past three years fault-proofing the network so we can provide a reliable and safe service for our customers.”

However, the chaos sparked a new round of blame-shifting between the State Government and QR as to why hundreds of affected commuters were not warned of the serious delays until it was too late.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk expressed her anger at the situation for the sixth time in seven weeks, criticising QR for mishandling maintenance work, saying it was “not good enough”.

“Queensland Rail has to explain that — its track maintenance issues. It’s up to them to come out and explain it and I believe they should have been more forthcoming with their explanation to commuters,” Ms Palaszczuk said.

Thursday’s train chaos came after a string of delays and problems with southeast transport.

Transport Minister Stirling Hinchliffe blamed the lack of service updates on a communication issue between QR officials and himself.

“It was being reiterated to me that there were announcements being made to commuters on trains and on platforms but also through social media,” he said.

“Clearly it wasn’t happening. We’ll need to get to the bottom and detail any failure to deliver appropriate communication to our customers.

“I think a very serious lesson has been learned by how this wasn’t communicated as well as I would’ve liked.”

Mr Hinchliffe said he would be handing out $300,000 worth of refunds as compensation to all commuters who used Citytrain services up until midday.

The communication woes continued during the day after an inappropriate tweet was sent out by QR amid the chaos.

Minister for Transport Stirling Hinchliffe blamed the lack of service updates on a communication issue between Queensland Rail and himself. Pic: Annette Dew

An investigation has been launched into how a laughing-face emoji tweet was posted about 12.30pm, before being promptly deleted.

“I can assure you that no one in the Government or QR regards this situation as funny,” Mr Hinchliffe said. “Clearly that’s some sort of breach of the QR communications system.”

The issues began about 4.30am when welding repairs to a rail line failed while trying to connect a track at Yeronga.

A broken down train on the Gold Coast line, signal failures at Dutton Park and South Brisbane and an overhead powerline issue also at Dutton Park were also among the “confluence” of issues.

Opposition Leader Tim Nicholls blamed the State Government for not putting enough focus on track maintenance.

“They’re concentrating on fixing their previous failure and they’ve taken their eye off the ball,” he said. “Queensland Rail and Stirling Hinchliffe are taking commuters for mugs.”

It follows a separate staffing crisis in October, which caused the cancellation of major services and led to the resignations of top QR bureaucrats.

The saga is currently being probed by a Commission of Inquiry led by Phillip Strachan.