It’s not surprising to see that Sydney has had another bad episode on the trains. Anyone from Melbourne who has travelled on public transport in Sydney knows just how terrible it is – from incredibly infrequent trains, to vast areas of the inner city with nothing but bus transport. When I was in Sydney last year, scoping out places to live, I sat waiting at Newtown station for about 40 minutes – on a Saturday morning. Even the least frequent railway lines in Melbourne aren’t anywhere near that bad, when the trains work.
This debacle is, however, quite well timed, given that there is a NSW state election being held in just over a week’s time. Voters will have no-one except themselves to blame if they limit their choices to the current Labor government who have done nothing for public transport over their previous three terms and the Liberal opposition who seem more interested in stacking themselves with fundamentalist Christians, than attempting to solve commuters’ problems.
As we’ve seen in Victoria, the major parties simply aren’t interested in providing frequent, efficient public transport. If the voters of NSW don’t opt for one of the alternatives, then they can expect to follow Victoria into another four years of clogged roads and faulty trains.