RateCityRail

Dear All,

RCR will be changing web hosts this week and there may be some down time on the website. Never fear we arn’t going away that easily

We hope to resume normal service from Monday 23/3/09, so please stay with us.

On other news, I had to get a bus today, I swear Sydney buses are more horrible than trains. I had 3 full buses go straight past the stop leaving myself and quite a few other commuters stuck. Finally the bus I managed to get on was crowded worse han any Cityrail train I’ve been on. Maybe I should start a RateSydneyBuses.com?

10 out of 10, that’s what I give the new Chatswood Epping rail link.

The stations are well designed & easy to negotiate.

The millennium train is comfortable & quiet(not noisy  as previously reported).

It took around 15 minutes for the Epping > Chatswood link, it was very quick.

I only had a 5 min to wait for a connection, and it was on time.

I am most impressed with mobile phone and excellent 3G data coverage the whole tunnel, not just the stations. IT staff & office workers will celebrate everywhere, you can work the whole trip home

NSW Government & Railcorp, job well done!

Don’t forget the link is free for the first 100 days. Don’t forget you need a valid ticket for the rest of your journey.

RCR

Dear All,

I must really apologise for the lack of posts lately. Usual excuses, I’m totally flat out at work at the moment and busy moving houses.

Never fear though, I’m still catching 2 to 4 trains a day.

This story took the cake though and I had to comment.

Alvin Singh a software developer has created a program for the iPhone called “Transit Sydney” which he sells on iTunes for $2.49 per copy. There aren’t many downloads at the moment, but I see huge potential for an application like this. (see image inset)

It seems that Railcorp have secretly been planning their own iPhone application, eek. and that they are trying to force Mr Singh to remove his application on the grounds of copyright infringements as Railcorp have copyright to their timetable.

Now, fair enough on the copyright issue, but surely this is one of those applications where “it’s for the greater good”. I know for a fact that there are usually only 4 or so timetables per platform, sometimes on smaller stations there are only 2 or 1! Usually there is someone’s head in the way, or a speaker or your glasses perscription just isn’t strong enough. An application like this would give you the next train(roughly) at a glance.

What would be really cool, would be if Railcorp had a web front end for all their timetables and put this live data online. The technology is there, and honestly, it’s not that hard.

Is Railcorp afraid that people will suddenly realise just how late their trains are running, and now matter if they change on time trains to > 10mins late that they will still have poor performance levels on some lines?

Anyway I think this is a huge over reaction on Railcorps part and this gentleman should be allow to keep selling his product.

I’ll keep an eye on this one.

Image source : www.smh.com.au

Dear RCR Readers,

Welcome to 2009. I’m finally back from leave and back on the trains again this week. It’s certainly shaping up to be an interesting year on the trains. Fares to rise, Cityrail changing the timetable and Cityrail endorsing trains to travel at “crush” capacity more frequently to support the new timetables.

This “crush” situation I’ll discuss in another post, but it does pose some interesting questions.

My experience on the trains this week since I’ve been back has been mixed. All the trains have been ontime, but I’m really struggling with the heat & humidity of the trains and underground stations.

Town Hall this week has just been unbareable(for someone who wears business shirt, tie & pants & considers themselves reasonably fit). You hop off either a nice cold train, or boiling hot one and just melt straight away.

Trains with A/C, or working A/C have been a little hard to get, but we’ll just have to see what the rest of summer has to say about that.

Later this week I’ll do some coverage on the overcrowding Cityrail is volunteering all commuters for in peak.

Can’t wait!

RCR

Dear Rate City Rail Readers,

We want to wish you and your family a Merry and safe Christmas and New Year period. As the City of Sydney winds down for Christmas and then ramps up again for New Years we’ll just have to see how the trains go.

Personally I’ll be out of town over the Christmas break so there won’t be any updates to this site until early 2009 unless something really big happens that I notice.

Enjoy your holidays!

Thanks for staying with us this year, and we look forward to more Cityrail hoopla next year.

RCR

So, do you feel safe on the trains?

Are you worried about being attacked on the train at night, or are you worried during the day?

Can you sleep on the train, or do you always keep one eye open looking out for trouble?

Do Cityrail do enough to keep you safe, or at least feeling safe?

It seems that the old security guards that used to wander the trains at night have not been replaced with the transit officers, which means the transit officers have the dual role of checking tickets and maintaining order. In my experience transit officers only really seem to operate until 10pm, catching a train after this time usually results in a journey no involving any security officers, transit officers or Police, I could be wrong though as this is just my personal experience.

I used to feel alot safer at night when 2 security guards patrolled every trainafter 10:30pm a few years back, you would usually see them 3 or 4 times on a trip from the outer suburbs into the city, even if they didn’t look like they could hurt a fly, or argue with anyone it was nice they were there, and their presence seemed enough to keep down rowdy drunks and hooligans.

All that said, unfortunately a 17 year old boy was stabbed and killed yesterday on a CItyrail train at 5:30pm at Marrickville on the Bankstown line. Reading the circumstances at the moment it seems that it was gang related violence and if it didn’t happen on the train, it probably would have occurred somewhere else. I don’t think Cityrail could have done any more to prevent this except perhaps transit officers on every train, but that’s probably not cost effective.

What needs to be done by Cityrail for you to feel safe?

Well it was bound to happen.

As mentioned in my earlier post to about IPART and making sure you got your submission in the NSW Government has managed to wrangle some increases in our fares over the next four years, details below.

I’m in two minds on this one, personally being a commuter every day I don’t want to see the fares increase, it’s more money out of my hip pocket, and at the moment more money seems to be leaving my pocket than entering it, and job security certainly isn’t what it used to be.

We all know the appauling state of some of the trains on the network, they really, really need to be replaced, do these fare increases go towards improving the infrastructure? If so, is it worth it?

Sould we, the people be paying for this? Is it a “right” as a resident of Sydney to have access to cheap and reliable public transport? Should the Government be covering these rises in fares instead of the commuters?

For all those questions I find it hard to give a definative answer. The trains need to be fixed, but our State Government is currently $1 Billion in debt. where else is the money going to come from?

I have a bitter taste in my mouth about this increase, and will probably curse buying my 14 day rail pass every week at the start of 2009, I suppose like all things, prices only go up not down, and what can we do about it?

CITYRAIL
2009
Distance: Up to 20 kilometres
Single tickets: 20c to 60c increase
Weeklies: $1 to $3 increase
 
Distance: 20 kilometres to 65 kilometres
Single tickets: 40c increase
Weeklies: $2 to $3 increase
 
Distance: 65 kilometres to 175 kilometres
Single tickets: No change
Weeklies: $3 increase
 
Distance: More than 175 kilometres
Single tickets: $8 decrease
Weeklies: From $2 increase to $25 decrease
 
2010 to 2012
Distance: Up to 20 kilometres
Single tickets: 20c to 80c increase
Weeklies: $3 to $6 increase
 
Distance: 20 kilometres to 65 kilometres
Single tickets: 80c to $1.40 increase
Weeklies: $9 to $9 increase
 
Distance: 65 kilometres to 175 kilometres
Single tickets: 20c to $1.20 increase
Weeklies: $7 to $9 increase
 
Distance: Over 175 kilometres
Single tickets: No change
Weeklies: $13 increas

Well just a short note. Seems that Cityrail Ticket inspectors have a new uniform. I noticed today that they are now blue, more Policeish. I also think it gives them some more visibility, the grey kind of blended in with everything.

Whether they are trying to look more friendly, approachable or like Police it’s unclear, but they look OK.

Keep on keeping us safe

Well, this is what I like to read about as a frequent Cityrail commuter.

It would seem that over the last few years Railcorps “Clearways” project has been plagued with problems, most of which are resolved quietly and just wind up costing the tax payer more money.

These two problems however go a little deeper, these effect customer safety on the network, and in terms of my priorities as a commuter, above trains being on time, clean and air-conditioned is the safety of myself, my family and my fellow commuters.

The two problems both revolved around bad earthing & insulation for new sub stations at Lidcombe and Revesby. It seemed that a banned contractor was used to design the earthing for these new sub stations and they were not properly insulated for their distance from underground gas and water lines. The end result…

“This led directly to the creation of a potential latent defect on the RailCorp network which could have resulted in death or injury,”

This information was learned about when the Sydney Morning Herald(www.smh.com.au) forced the government to reveal a secret Railcorp report into the events. It was released under the Freedom of Information Act.

My thanks go out to our tireless Cityrail employees who thankfully picked up the faults during the testing phase and hopefully they have been rectified.

I feel safer now catching the trains, don’t you?

For more information on this story go to SMH’s article

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/rail-blunders-hundreds-of-lives-at-risk/2008/10/29/1224956136414.html

Also, don’t forget to get your submissions in for the adjustments of Cityrails fares.

See…

http://www.ratecityrail.com/2008/10/peak-cityrail-fares-could-increase-from-2009/

Ah that was my piece of gold gleaned from yesterdays travelling experiences.

Travel during peak down the North Shore line yesterday afternoon Citybound was a little haphazard. All trains from around 5:30pm were 10-15 minutes late causing serious crowding on all stations I saw from North Sydney through to Central. At that time of the day with so many workers crowding into stations it just doesn’t work when the trains don’t show up.

Anyway as quite often happens at North Sydney, a train leaves that you’ve just missed. The station slowly starts to fill up with commuters. It’s been more than 5 mins between trains, people start looking restless and worried and looking down the line for that next train, it doesn’t come. Eventually the station fills up side to side and full length with commuters, when a train does come it’s not going to fit everyone.

Usually Cityrail keep you waiting the 5 minutes past 5 minutes late(so 10 minutes) before they start informing you the trains are out of time tabled order and initially no estimate on the next train. Finally the dreaded announcement, “The next City bound service departs from platform 3″, this means going up and over the platforms, which really was pretty tricky due to so many people on the platform and half the platform wanting to stay and the other half leave.

To Cityrails credit they were on the radios to the train crew to hold the train as it was due to leave, except half of Platform 1 was making the pilgramige over to Platform 3 and I’m sure the other commuters wouldn’t have been happy if it left whilst they were half way there.

Anyway, train was a cattle service as usual, my favourite point of the whole journey was the guard of the train after Town Halls crush “Welcome to happy hour, next stop Central”.