Year of disruption in Sydney Trains maintenance blitz

After a scathing review found years of maintenance backlogs, weekend commuters will be forced to endure at least 12 months of trackwork.

Sydney commuters are warned to brace for a “year or more of pain” as the government fast-tracks a $97 million maintenance blitz to deliver the “world-class train system Sydney needs and deserves”.

The pain will be felt on weekends for at least 12 months, with significant work to every line across the Sydney Trains network, and rail replacement buses picking up the slack.

“The work will be around the clock from midnight Friday to midnight Sunday,” Transport Minister Jo Haylen said.

“We have no choice. It’s the only way to get it fixed and have reliable trains again.

“If you use trains on weekends, I’m sorry but you’re going to find yourself on buses – a lot.”

The blitz will last at least 12 months. Picture: Jeremy Piper

Starting today, the Sydney Rail Repair Plan will ramp up maintenance after the Sydney Trains Review found a dramatic backlog in maintenance stretching back to the introduction of a new timetable in 2017.

The review was triggered after three huge network failures in March, including when an outage of the digital train radio communications system shut down the network for most of the afternoon on March 8.

Sisters Analisa and Vanessa West are tired of disruptions. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

The perfect storm of the maintenance backlog, industrial action and “black swan events” like the wet weather of 2022 has created a “fragile” train network.

Central Coast sisters Vanessa and Analisa West often travel by train to Sydney on the weekend to visit friends and study at university.

“It just ruins everything when the trains aren’t working … it feels like Sydney Trains should have been more on top of things,” Vanessa said.

“It needs to be improved for sure, but I feel like it shouldn’t have got to this point.”

In March a train was struck by overhead wiring.

The pair said if they had to get a replacement bus they would likely cancel plans in the city.

The weekend headache comes after new research from the Tourism and Transport Forum found weekend foot traffic in the CBD has completely recovered after the pandemic.

Meanwhile, weekday workers are still lagging behind in the recovery at just 64 per cent of pre-2020 figures.

Ms Haylen said the government had no choice but to get through the backlog in as short period of time, in what she said is the biggest program of rail maintenance undertaken in Sydney.

“We simply must take this on and get it done. Continuing system failures and meltdowns are not an option,” Ms Haylen said.

“I want to be totally honest with everyone – for the next year or so we are going to massively disrupt the network on weekends while our crews get in and fix it.”

There will be about 100 work sites every weekend, and about 600,000 commuters will be impacted.

The maintenance blitz will also put pressure on Sydney’s already crippled bus network as commuters are forced on to replacement buses.

The Bus Industry Taskforce found more than 500 drivers are needed to address the shortage and get the network back to full capacity.