Hundreds of trains cancelled or terminated early in past month: See how many on your regional line

After the introduction of cheaper V/Line fares, hundreds of train services have been cancelled, terminated or departed from the wrong stations in the past month. Check your line here.

More than 500 V/Line services were cancelled, terminated early or did not depart from where they were meant to last month, causing commuter hell for regional Victorians and making a farce out of the Andrews government’s new cheaper fares.

Data provided exclusively to the Herald Sun reveals that between July 1 and August 1 this year, 299 services were cancelled outright, a further 141 services terminated early and 77 services had short departures.

In total, 517 services were thrown into chaos in just one month.

V/Line said reasons for the service cancellations and changes included infrastructure faults, vandalism, train faults, trespassers, emergency services incidents and trains slowing in areas where construction was taking place for the state government’s Big Build.

However, it also has told commuters over social media that trains were not running as scheduled “due to staff availability” and “due to delayed train crew”, among other reasons.

The southwest Geelong and Warrnambool lines have been hardest hit by cancellations, early terminations and departures from different stations, followed by the western Ballarat, Ararat and Maryborough lines.

But the northern — Bendigo, Echuca, Swan Hill — lines, northeast — Albury, Seymour and Shepparton lines — and eastern — Bairnsdale and Traralgon — lines have all also experienced chaos.

A recent tweet sent from V/Line regarding changed services.

Scores of updates have been sent via Twitter.

Geelong residents — who had 115 services cancelled, 78 terminated early and 50 short departures last month alone — have told of heading home from work in Melbourne on trains scheduled to travel to South Geelong, Marshall or Waurn Ponds, where their cars were parked, and finding the service unexpectedly terminated at Geelong station, leaving them waiting at night and in the cold, on the platform, for the next regional train.

There were no buses provided for passengers when this occurred last Friday night and the wait was about half an hour.

On other recent occasions Geelong region residents heading to Melbourne found the scheduled service they planned to take was not running at all or was departing from another station, for reasons not made clear.

Multiple services from Southern Cross to Geelong and stations beyond have also been cancelled with little or no notice.

The regularly cancelled services come just months after Premier Daniel Andrews delivered his pre election promise to regional Victorians of daily fares capped at the metropolitan rate of $9.20 for a weekday full fare.

A V/Line spokesman said over the past month, nearly 95 per cent of its 9530 scheduled services were delivered “despite significant challenges to the network, including major works impacting our busiest lines”.

Premier, Daniel Andrews and Minister for Public Transport Ben Carroll announcing cheaper regional V/Line fares. Picture: David Crosling

“We thank passengers for their patience and understanding over recent weeks and are continuing to make every effort to ensure any cancellations have the least possible impact on passengers,” he said.

V/Line continued to conduct maintenance across all rail corridors to help minimise the risk of infrastructure faults, with a $26.6m maintenance blitz recently completed on the Ballarat Line, the spokesman said.

It was also working closely with its maintenance partners to help reduce fleet faults, while placing an additional focus on improving afternoon peak performance and continually adding new trains to the network, with the 107th VLocity train entering service recently.

VLocity 108 expected to come on to the network soon to start taking passengers, he said.

Where possible, V/Line replaced cancelled services with coaches.