Cuts to peak-hour trains in shake-up of Sydney’s rail timetable

Passenger train services will be cut by up to four an hour on two key rail lines during peak periods as part of a major shake-up of Sydney’s rail and bus timetable planned for October 20 – several weeks after the start of a 12-month shutdown of a busy line in the city’s south-west.

A confidential document by the state’s transport agency outlines the “key service changes” resulting from the new rail timetable, which includes a reduction of four services per hour on the T1 north shore line between Hornsby and Central Station in peak periods.

Two services per hour on the T1 western line in the peak between St Marys and Central Station will also be cut as part of the new timetable. In the morning peak, eight services on the T8 line will run via Sydney Airport and eight via Sydenham, which will be a “reduction of two via the airport”.

As part of the changes to the T1 north shore line, the document details the “removal of inter-peak Lindfield terminations” as trains end their journey at North Sydney station between 10am and 3pm. In addition, late-night trains will terminate at North Sydney instead of further along the line at Gordon, from Sunday to Thursday.

The document cites the “removal of Ashfield services” on the T2 line, but Transport for NSW disputed this. It also outlines “simplified stopping patterns” to the T1 line from Parramatta, Emu Plains and Seven Hills, and to the T2 line.

The planned timetable changes are slated to take effect on October 20 – three weeks after part of the Bankstown line is closed for at least 12 months to allow it to be converted to single-deck metro train standards.

Sydney commuters face a host of service changes from the introduction of the new rail timetable.Credit: Jessica Hromas

Once complete late next year, a 13-kilometre stretch of the line between Bankstown and Sydenham will become the final section of the M1 metro line, which extends under the central city and harbour, and on to Chatswood and the city’s north-west.

Another confidential Transport for NSW document – dated July this year – warns that a “reduced service through” the airport in the morning peak “may lead to overcrowding and/or reputational damage”, and was a risk for the timetable delivery.

It cites as a key risk “public messaging not clear enough regarding various public transport changes, and being too exclusively focused on rail timetable changes”.

It adds that the public may have “insufficient time to understand bus changes, and therefore lead to communications with schools about changes to be one-mode focused rather than considering all mode changes”.

The documents do not outline specifics of planned changes to bus services.

Coalition transport spokesperson Natalie Ward said the government’s spin was consistently not aligning with the lived experience of Sydney commuters.

“The transport minister promised there would be no cuts to services, and now we see that is not true. Under Labor, we are seeing train reliability get worse, industrial action on the railways beginning and now cuts to critical services,” she said.

However, a spokesperson for Transport Minister Jo Haylen said the Liberals said the sky would fall in when the government adjusted the bus timetable in Sydney’s north and north-west to integrate services with the new metro line.

“Those timetable adjustments delivered more reliable bus services and connected different transport modes to one another. That’s our objective here too,” he said. “The Liberals left us a rail network that was neither resilient nor reliable. We are still fixing their mess.”

Transport for NSW said it was making adjustments to the public transport network to integrate the recently opened city-section of the M1 line into Sydney’s train and bus system, as well as delivering improved service reliability by simplifying services across the network.

“Careful planning goes into determining how we best use our train network’s capacity,” it said. “These adjustments are still being finalised and will be announced in due course. Transport will ensure passengers are kept informed of service adjustments in advance.”

The agency said it was working to deliver several bus timetable adjustments, but did not elaborate on what they would entail.

Memories are still fresh of the widespread cancellations and delays to Sydney’s train services in the months after a new timetable was rolled out in late 2017 under the previous Coalition government.

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