Interestingly enough I have recently visited the staff at a number of stations along this route. Feedback from the staff have highlighted some of your issues raised and we are proactively looking into service patterns in this area as part of ensuring that we match timetable services to actual and future demand.
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| Sydney Trains' CEO Howard Collins. Photo: GovNews.com.au |
Restore Inner West Line founder Roydon Ng recently asked Sydney Trains' CEO Howard Collins about plans to improve public transport in the area:
We’d like to know what plans Sydney Trains has in store to fix the lack of train services in Sydney’s Transport Blackhole (Lidcombe, Berala, Regents Park, Birrong, Sefton, Chester Hill, Leightonville, Villawood, and Carramar) which has lost over 80% of train services with the removal of the Liverpool via Regents Park train service (Inner West Line) from the area in 2013.
The Government has said that one of the reasons for cutting the Inner West Line to Homebush was to address service gaps of 24 minutes, now commuters in the area that previously relied on the Inner West Line to Liverpool have service gaps of 30 minutes for most of the day.
Not to mention having to interchange at Birrong, Lidcombe and Strathfield to travel along the former Liverpool via Regents Park (Inner West Line) route to the City. Here’s an example of the disadvantage caused by the cutting the Inner West Line to Homebush (that we’ve raised repeatedly with Sydney Trains without a response):
Sefton to Homebush before 2013 was a direct 16 minute journey but after the 2013 timetable changes it has become a 52 minute indirect journey with 3 interchanges needed at Birrong, Lidcombe and Strathfield (see http://www.restoreinnerwestline.org/2015/01/17min-direct-journeys-now-52min.html)
Stations west and north of Bankstown on the T3 Bankstown Line don’t benefit from the 1000 “extra” services on the line and will even lose their last direct train to city with the Sydney Metro to Bankstown. This area is also one of Australia’s most disadvantaged low SES communities which is heavily reliant on public transport for their daily commutes.
At least between Lidcombe and Cabramatta via Regents Park, why can’t a regular train service running on the currently unused tracks there? And can the 3 special weekday Liverpool via Regents Park services be increased to at least 1 per hour every day?
Response above.