Sydney train delays, petrol prices: why getting back to work is so hard

Sky rocketing fuel prices, train chaos and crushing tolls are making it impossible for us to get back to work. Something must be done. It’s time to have your say.

Full marks to Dom Perrottet for putting out the message that it’s time to stop schlumping around in your trackies and get back to work.

But here’s the thing: If people are going to get back to work, they need to be able to get to work.

Yet right now would-be city workers who have to commute are faced with few good options.

Drive, and face shocking petrol prices (OK, not the state government’s fault) as well as high tolls (definitely the government’s fault) and even the risk of being caught up in some snaking line of traffic because a few hippies decide to sit down in the middle of a road to save the planet (fault, fault, and triple fault).

Alternatively, they can be all nice and virtuous and take public transport.

The only thing is that if they do, they risk getting caught standing on a platform for hours, or turned away because the network is gripped by unpredictable and rolling delays.

Last night and today, commutes have been thrown into chaos because of “weather” which mostly happened last week — but the timetable now comprehensively borked.

Then there is the ongoing threat of industrial action or government over-reaction to industrial reaction (as we saw in the strike-not-strike a couple of weeks ago).

None of this seems like a great option, and if the government wants us back into the office — a worthy goal that, sorry cynics, is not just about saving cafe owners or lining the pockets of landlords — it needs to make it easy for people to do so.

Commuters wait for a train on Tuesday morning at Central Station amid further delays. Picture: NCA NewsWire / James Gourley

When it comes to driving, Dom Perrottet can’t do anything about excise taxes, Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, or Joe Biden’s cancelling of crucial oil pipelines.

But he can do something about tolls and future protests.

Given that the Premier is facing easily the most competent Labor opposition leader in the country in Chris Minns, who has already made tolls an issue for Western Sydney commuters, the way forward is clear.

Toll relief, however it comes, is an urgent priority for workers already staring down the barrel of inflation and possible interest rate rises and who can pay upwards of $40 a day just for the right to earn a living.

This seems like a no-brainer, as does dealing with protests like the one we saw at the Spit Bridge yesterday.

For whatever reason, the state seems unable to deal with those who plonked themselves in the middle of a road with any of the vigour that characterised their handling of anti-lockdown protests last year.

Voters with long memories will note the disconnect between having to show their papers at police roadblocks to prevent protesters congregating in the CBD last year and this week being forced to sit in traffic at the Spit Bridge.

High fuel prices are seen in Sydney's South Coogee. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Nicholas Eagar

This is a good opportunity for Mr Perrottet to both strike a blow for commuters and challenge Labor by staking out the sensible centre of state politics and finding the balance between the right to peaceful protest – by the side of the road, please — and everyone else’s to get to work.

What is the point of a police force, otherwise?

More complex, of course, is dealing with the unions and sorting out timetables.

Either way, though, there has to be a sense that the government is in control, and not just constantly reacting — as it has been seen to be time and again these last few weeks.

Sydney is a city that lives and dies by its transport network, and the same goes for the governments that run them.

Mr Perrottet has done a marvellous job talking the talk of getting NSW and indeed Australia out of the pandemic mindset.

But if he does not also do the hard practical stuff that gets us moving again, it is he who could be spending his days hanging around the house come 2023.

Originally published as Sydney train delays, petrol prices: why getting back to work is so hard