CityRail disruption: deferred maintenance to blame

This morning, Tuesday the 12th March 2013, the city’s railway network was brought down by a regime of underinvestment and deferred maintenance. Over the past decade Sydney ’s railway network has experienced repeated major incidents that have disrupted the lives of city’s residents and the centre of the state’s economy.

Some incidents like Strathfield’s dodgy air-conditioning fan-belt have shown that chronic underinvestment has left the city without redundant systems to ensure the continued operation of what should be a high availability network.

However, the repeated tangling of pantographs in the overhead wiring is an inexcusable example of maladministration by the NSW State Government.

“These incidents are usually very rare on the world’s railways. However, the state’s insistence on deferring essential maintenance to free funds for building motorways have left Sydney ’s most important asset in a troubled state.”

During the morning, commuters received confused and conflicting information about not only the nature of the incident but also the simple fact of its location. Ecotransit has since been told that this morning’s incident was caused when the pantograph at fault tangled in the catenary on the Northern Line.

“This morning I was standing at Chatswood, Minister Berejiklian’s local station, with hundreds of other passengers waiting for a shuttle to Macquarie Park . We were the lucky ones; others are reported to have been trapped on a train for two hours waiting for the state to respond” said EcoTransit Sydney Co-Convenor, Mat Hounsell.