Transport advocate has his say on timetable changes

Campaigner calls for free weekend of travel to 'acknowledge the impact' of rail fail throughout the years

Robert Dow welcomes service restorations but want the rail fail acknowledged. Picture: Rob Williams

RAIL Back On Track welcomes the restoration of the October 2016 Queensland Rail Citytrain Timetable from Monday the 29th July 2019.

This will put back around 430 weekly services and a consistent weekday (Monday to Friday) timetable.

The first wave of service cancellations (53 in number) occurred on the 30th September, 2016, and during October 2016, further waves of cancellations lead to the situation of "rail fail” being declared. Since then there have been a number of reduced service timetables as Queensland Rail recovered the numbers of train crew.

We call for a weekend of free travel on the SEQ public transport network on the 27th to 28th July (exception Airtrain and CityCat) to acknowledge the impact on the travelling public of the reduced service rail timetables over the past years.

Once the new timetable is in place, we would like to see progress for improved train service frequency on the Sunshine Coast Line (promised more services by Government in 2015, never delivered) and improving services between Nambour and Gympie North. After that further frequency improvements to day inter-peak and counter-peak services on all lines.

We thank all at Queensland Rail for the working hard to get back the October 2016 timetable.

Robert Dow

RAIL Back On Track

Goodna