Passengers have been left stranded as V/Line services fail to meet demand, while there is no guarantee a system wide outage will not happen again, The Nationals’ Member for Northern Victoria Gaelle Broad has told Parliament.
Ms Broad said in 2018 the Labor Government had promised services every 40 minutes on the Bendigo – Melbourne line, but eight years on, travellers were still being treated badly.
“Today, with increasing demand, passengers have been left stranded or sitting on the floor of trains. I often travel by train to Parliament from Bendigo or Castlemaine and experience delays and disruptions myself,” Ms Broad said.
“With the focus on Big Build projects in Melbourne, this government is treating regional rail services like regional roads: they are being left to fall apart.”
Ms Broad told parliament that trains on the Bendigo, Geelong and Ballarat lines were all disrupted due to a track fault. Regular passengers reported constant delays and disruptions.
But Ms Broad said the biggest disruption followed the Telstra outage that suspended V/Line trains for two days in July, bringing over 550 train services to a halt on July 8 and 9. Services gradually resumed from midday on Thursday July 9.
Ms Broad requested a ministerial briefing to determine what action the government was taking to ensure a statewide V/Line outage did not occur again.
“The entire regional rail network was halted when a nationwide Telstra communications failure knocked out the critical train radio and control systems. Between 80,000 and 120,000 passengers were impacted. Thousands of people were left stranded, some travelling to work, others returning home and many missing important medical appointments. Around 388 coaches were in operation to support passenger journeys, but it was not enough to meet the demand,” Ms Broad said.
“The government offered two days of free travel and compensation for additional costs incurred due to the outage, but it is still a matter of discussion with the Australian Rail Track Corporation as to what happens if an outage does occur again. There is no backup plan.”
Ms Broad asked the minister to outline what work is being done to increase the reliability of V/Line services and explain what happened to the Labor government’s commitment, made eight years ago, to increase the frequency of train services to every 40 minutes.
Ms Broad said it was time regional Victorians received a fair share of state funding.
“In Government the Liberals and Nationals will deliver 25 per cent of all new infrastructure funding to the regions under the Fair Share Guarantee.”
Analysis by the independent Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) has confirmed that less than 12 per cent of capital spending is allocated to regional Victorians, despite regional Victorians making up 25 per cent of the state’s population.
“Quality infrastructure is needed across the state, not just in metropolitan Melbourne,” Ms Broad said.
Media Contact: Linda Barrow 0484 303 764 linda.barrow@parliament.vic.gov.au
