Queensland Rail fail: NGRs to be included in punctuality data

TRANSPORT Minister Mark Bailey has been accused of deceiving commuters after claiming he had solved a major headache with Queensland Rail’s punctuality rating system.

TRANSPORT Minister Mark Bailey has been accused of deceiving commuters after claiming he had solved a major headache with Queensland Rail’s punctuality rating system.

Mr Bailey took to his Twitter account on Friday to declare the rail operator would begin including any delays caused by the state’s controversial New Generation Rollingstock trains in its official on-time performance data linked to lucrative bonuses for QR executives.

MINISTER BACKS FLAWED FIGURES

SERVICES EXCLUDED FROM DATA

$50M DEMAND FOR MORE SCREEN TIME

QR EXECUTIVE BONUSES SAFE

It comes after The Courier-Mail revealed last month that delays triggered by NGR trains were being quietly excluded from QR’s official on-time-running data, which is also used by the State Government to measure whether it is meeting its contractual obligations.

Mr Bailey also told ABC Radio the NGRs would be included in on-time-running results from January.

He then took to Twitter to declare that from January QR would publish “contractual on-time running data which includes any delays by NGR technical faults.”

From 1 Jan 2019 @QueenslandRail & @TransLinkSEQ will publish contractual on-time running data which includes any delays by NGR technical faults.

On time running has been above 95% incl NGR last 4 quarters but this change gives full picture for commuters as more NGR’s roll out pic.twitter.com/cqmItomvd4

— Mark Bailey MP (@MarkBaileyMP) November 16, 2018

His office later confirmed NGR would be included in the contractual on-time results.

But by late Friday afternoon, QR had issued a statement contradicting Mr Bailey’s statement.

It said it would start publishing punctuality data with NGR delays included, but that the new train fleet would continue to be excluded from its contractual on-time-running results.

It confirmed NGR technical faults would continue to be treated as “force majeure”, or outside of QR’s control, as it did not technically own or maintain the fleet.

The $4.4 billion NGR trains are owned by the State Government and are being delivered by a public-private consortium led by Canadian train builder Bombardier, with the contract including a 30-year maintenance agreement.

Deputy Opposition Leader Tim Mander said accused Mr Bailey of making misleading statements about his “phony on-time-running stats”.

“This just goes to show that Mark Bailey has absolutely zero integrity,” he said.

“Commuters should be rightly asking who on Earth is running our rail system.

“Once again Mark Bailey is focused on spin, rather than fixing Labor’s rail fail.”

Rail Back on Track commuter advocate Robert Dow also accused Mr Bailey of “duplicity.”

Mr Dow has been pushing for the new trains to be included in on-time running data, pointing out that they will represent 55 per cent of the fleet when fully rolled out.

QR has previously confirmed it had excluded more than 800 late running trains from its official punctuality data between December 2017 and September.

Mr Bailey did not respond to questions.