Sydney commuters frustrated by delays on train network after outage chaos

Australia Broadcast Center

21-05-2025

Frustrated Sydney commuters have shared tales of chaotic crowds, a lack of communication and bafflingly quiet services on Wednesday morning.
Sydney's rail network has been in chaos after a train became entangled with live wires during Tuesday's peak-hour rush.
The network is not expected to get back to normal until Thursday morning's peak with major disruptions expected throughout Wednesday.
Ben Ivey from Hornsby was kicking himself when he remembered he had left his laptop at his Parramatta office, leaving him unable to work from home and having to brave the commute.
"It was awful," he said.
Mr Ivey usually takes the train from Hornsby to Strathfield where he changes for Parramatta, but when he reached the interchange, he could go no further.
"There was nothing at all. The trains were coming, but they weren't heading in the right direction, they were all going to the city," he told ABC News.
"I must have been there for half an hour. And then they said no trains were going and if you're heading west, you need to take the bus.
"Then the 526 bus was full, so we had to wait for another. It was chaotic and incredibly frustrating."
Sydney Trains are working to get six tracks on the network operating as normal.
Mr Ivey said his normal commute was an hour, but today it was almost two.
But he said the mood among his fellow travellers "wasn't too bad".
"No-one was yelling and screaming and carrying on, it was OK."
And there is one benefit of the experience, he added: a very peaceful office and hopefully, the chance to leave work early.
Alex Bennett said he was staggered by the lack of information from Sydney Trains this morning, which he believes made things even harder for Sydneysiders trying to plan their route and businesses relying on staff.
After reading on his third-party travel app that 80 per cent of trains were cancelled, he arrived at Waitara Station to learn that no trains were scheduled at all.
"There was also a message saying, 'The next train doesn't stop at this platform' and a recorded announcement saying the same thing," he told ABC News.
But the communication turned out to be wrong, he said.
"I was only there for two or three minutes when a train stopped. So I got on and the train went straight through to the city. So my trip was actually really efficient because of phantom trains."
He was surprised to see the train empty, the North Shore Line platforms he passed through ghost-like, and the city unusually quiet.
"Everyone was expecting pandemonium so people thought they couldn't work and didn't even go to the station. These poor communications have real impacts on businesses."
Sydney Trains has been contacted for comment, while NSW Premier Chris Minns said he understood people's frustration.
"I think the commuting public would have been understanding of [the technical faults] if there hadn't been a persistent lack of reliability on the public transport network over a long period of time," he said.
Alex said it was great that Sydney also had the Metro, which runs on a separate network, as a back-up, but it was simply unable to cope with the overflow.
"People coming into the city by Metro today said it was like sardines; they were absolutely jammed."
On his commute home last night, shortly after the incident at Strathfield, he was unable to even enter Gadigal Metro station on Park Street.
"They were waiting for people to come out before they'd let anyone back into the station."
One female government employee from Gosford, who did not want to be named, gave up on her hour-and-a-half commute to Parramatta altogether this morning.
"I was listening to ABC Radio, which was saying most trains weren't operating from Strathfield. So I ended up turning around from Gosford and going home.
"I decided it was going to take too long."
She said Gosford Station was quieter than normal this morning, suggesting others had felt the same.
"It looked like people had decided not to tempt fate."
She had recently returned to communing after eight years and believes the Sydney train network has deteriorated in that time.
"When there are issues, it can take hours to actually get anywhere. For a world city, our network can be quite unreliable, particularly when you're travelling long distances."
A female teacher, also travelling from the Central Coast, said she had no choice but to brave the network in order to get to her job at Cheltenham High School on Sydney's Upper North Shore.
She said trains were "sporadic".
"The express from Woy Woy to the City had only four carriages for most trains instead of eight. Trains were only sporadic on the Newcastle line, with many cancelled.
"There were no T9 services from Hornsby to Epping so I had to go to Epping and wait half an hour for a bus back to Cheltenham High School."
The lack of information made things harder, she added.
"Apps did not indicate what was happening and indicator boards were not updated."
She said her journey today came after it took her four hours to get home last night, but she admits her ordeal could have been worse.
"I have colleagues who've spent $100 on taxis."