CityRail Delays
Reverend the Hon. Dr Gordon Moyes: I ask the Minister for Roads, on behalf of the Minister for Transport, a question without notice. Is the Minister aware of a recent report by the New South Wales Auditor General that a shortage of engineers threatens to derail major upgrade projects to Sydney’s CityRail networks, causing delays and cost blow-outs as well as risking the $1.8 billion Clearways Project? Will the Minister confirm that in 2007 almost all trains experienced more failures than was the case in the previous year, and that more than 90 per cent of CityRail’s electric fleet is more than 10 years old, with 58 per cent more than 20 years old? Will the Minister indicate what measures are in place to ensure CityRail commuters that trains will run on time and be clean and safe this summer?
Deferred answer to CityRail delays
On 15 November 2007 Reverend the Hon. Dr Gordon Moyes asked the Minister for Roads, representing the Minister for Transport, a question without notice regarding CityRail delays. The Minister for Transport provided the following response:
I am advised:
There is an Australian and world-wide shortage of all engineers, including signal engineers. The world-wide industry shortage is exacerbated in Australia, by the mining boom and large scale investment in infrastructure projects across the country.
RailCorp is addressing the problem in a number of ways, including supporting further study by staff, re-engaging retired engineers, implementing a high school program with the Department of Education to interest technical studies students in rail engineering and offering a Developing Engineers’ Graduate Program.
In the sixteen months (up to September 2007) since the introduction of the May, 2006 timetable, 92% of CityRail services are now on time. This is compared to the preceding sixteen months where 80% of CityRail services were on time.
The challenge now is to sustain these improvements in the long term.
The Iemma Government is investing in a multi-billion dollar package of capital improvements to rail services. Measures include:
spending more than $8 billion on a 15 year plan to extend the CityRail network to service growth areas in the north west and south west and increase network capacity in the City;
over $1.8 billion for the Rail Clearways Plan to separate the existing 14 overlapping CityRail lines, removing complexity and interconnections on the system;
recruiting and training record driver numbers, exceeding the commitment of this Government of 1350 by December 2005; and
purchasing 626 new rail carriages under a contract worth $3.6 billion to replace the last 498 non air-conditioned carriages with state of the art, reliable carriages and to provide additional capacity to cater for patronage growth.
This is in addition to the $466 million already invested in 141 Millennium carriages, the last of which were delivered in June 2005.
I am advised that CityRail will review services across the suburban network as a result of the first of the Outer Suburban fleet carriages that were introduced into service in December 2006.
I am committed to ensuring safer, cleaner and more reliable services—across all modes of transport.