Action for Public Transport (N.S.W.) Inc.

“In the three years since the last rise,” Mr Miles said, “CityRail has slashed services, slowed the trains, and failed to overcome overcrowding and reliability problems. Why should the commuters pay more?”

Mr Miles admitted that more money is needed to fix the problems, but he said it should not come from discontented users. “The whole community benefits from an efficient rail system,” Mr Miles said, “and the government must channel more funds into the infrastructure.” He said that perhaps when the trains provide a service that is fast, frequent, reliable, clean and safe, then the users might readily pay more. “Such a service would even attract people out of their cars,” he said.

“It is misleading of the government to talk about a 2.9% increase in fares,” Mr Miles said, “when some fares will rise by up to ten times that amount.” He said that the off-peak return tickets will rise by upwards of 22%, with an increase of 38% for short trips up to five kilometres.

Mr Miles said that the public anger over this proposal is reflected in the number of submissions received by IPART. “By today,” Mr Miles said, “114 public submissions were on the web site, an unprecedented number for this type of review. I have not looked at all of them,” he said, “ but in random samples I have only found one that supports a fare rise, and that was with some caution.”

“It is worth noting’ Mr Miles said, “that all of these submissions have been sent by private individuals, obviously all regular rail users. They challenge CityRail’s claims that things are getting better.” Mr Miles said that a few contributors admitted that cancellations have been less frequent over recent months, but they would not consent to a rise until the trend proved permanent.

Mr Miles said that the closing date for submissions is 31st March, so there is still time to write one. The CityRail submission is on the IPART website at http://www.ipart.nsw.gov.au/.

Submissions may be sent to IPART at PO Box Q290, QVB Post Office NSW 1230, or by email to transport@ipart.nsw.gov.au.

Mr Miles said that, while it is OK for private submissions to just list examples of failures or complaints, it is preferable if these can be linked to specific statements or claims in CityRail’s document.

Contact: Allan Miles 9516-1906 or Kevin Eadie 9819-6052