00:01Well just last week the government was announcing more trains and more frequent services on
00:06the T4 eastern suburbs and Illawarra and south coastlines which are notorious for delays.
00:12The new timetable was supposed to begin on November 15th but the government has decided
00:16to abandon it citing almost universal opposition from the public.
00:20It's become evident and very clear that the vast vast majority of people do not want this
00:26new timetable and as a result of that we've decided that we're not going ahead with it.
00:31The truth of the matter is since we released the train timetable I haven't run into anybody who
00:36supported the change. The changes involved untangling the T4 and south coastlines
00:41while wait times would shorten some passengers faced longer trips. Especially if I want to catch
00:47the train back from sport after waiting an extra 15 minutes. Sometimes I'm late for work some days
00:52and yeah I reckon it's just unacceptable. It sounded like it was going to lengthen and a lot of the
00:57outer stations were going to stop. The ones that the trains whizzed through they were going to stop
01:02there so it suits people you know from further away I think but no I'm glad they abandoned it. It's
01:09fine
01:10the way it is. One sore point was the plan to bypass Walleye Creek which would have meant less direct
01:15airport trips for travellers heading up from the south coast. They would have to contend with extra
01:20changes while hauling luggage. There was also concern that the south west line wouldn't stop at Sydenham
01:25making it harder for commuters to transfer to the metro. Transport for New South Wales says it did
01:30speak to people as part of drawing up the new timetable. The agency says there's a difference
01:35between the one that looks good on paper and the day-to-day experience of passengers. We could see
01:40that there were more services being added to what is already a very busy and complicated network
01:46and the trade-off was longer travel times. That is not an easy message to sell to any
01:51person that gets up every day and jumps onto the train especially when they have faced periods over
01:56recent times of reliability that hasn't been up to standard. The opposition has been campaigning on
02:01this issue with a number of Liberal seats affected including the marginal electorate of Oatley which
02:06Labor hopes to seize. Well it's certainly a political decision. What we have is Labor can't get it right.
02:11They can't get it right when it comes to our buses. They can't get it right when it comes to
02:15our trains.
02:15This is a humiliating backflip for Chris Minns and his Labor government. He wanted to impose much slower
02:21train services on shire commuters. The Premier admits some of his own MPs raised concerns amid backlash from
02:28locals. He says the government will lift reliability by focusing on maintenance instead.
