IT’S no surprise Warrnambool’s maligned rail service slumped to new lows with just 15.4 per cent of trains considered on time in December. The writing has been on the wall for months.
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Trains on the Warrnambool line have failed to meet operator V/Line’s punctuality target of 92 per cent in each of the past 24 months. V/Line says a train is punctual if it arrives within 10 minutes and 59 seconds of the scheduled time.
The Warrnambool line has 34 passenger services a week and not even one a day terminated less than 11 minutes late. It was also no surprise that Warrnambool’s punctuality record was the state’s worst.
The inability to run to a timetable is symptomatic of a service in crisis. The response from V/Line so far is that it will adjust the timetable later this month to allow for longer journeys. What a joke.
Lateness is just one of many issues with the Warrnambool service. The trip takes much longer than it should or could, the rolling stock is outdated, drivers have been bouncing around in their seats because the furniture is so old, the track so rough, and level crossings are reportedly unsafe.
And you can now add airconditioning failures to the list. The accounts of passengers detailed today further highlight the problems plaguing the service.
An elderly couple endured a nightmare trip recently when, on a 35-degree day, airconditioning failed, leaving passengers sweating in their seats as the service ran late. The conditions inflamed one woman’s health concerns and she is vowing never to take the train again.
The government and V/Line have been reluctant to comment. Their responses to our questions have been pathetic and predictably they have required multiple prompts to do so. The depth to their replies highlight how little they care about the Warrnambool train service. Sadly, their responses provide a telling insight into the chances of upgrades.
The government and V/Line need to come clean. They need to provide answers. They need to come up with solutions, a vision, funding. It’s not good enough to release a document that includes a couple of lines about motherhood goals for the service. They need to take us on a ride to transforming the state’s ugly duckling of a service into one that is smoother, quicker, on time, more comfortable and safer.
Until they do, Warrnambool’s train service will remain an embarrassment to both.
