Sydney's train pain was a domino effect of things going wrong

Australia Broadcast Center

21-05-2025

The first sign of trouble came just before 4pm on Tuesday.
"Major disruptions to trains between Central and Strathfield due to power supply issues," the alert from the Transport for NSW said.
For Sydney commuters, the words "major disruptions" are all too familiar.
Peak hour for passengers on the North Shore and Western Line, Inner West and Leppington Line, Liverpool and Inner West Line, Airport and South Line, Northern Line, Central Coast and Newcastle Line and Blue Mountains Line were all affected, Transport for NSW said.
In other words, all trains going to the west and north of the city were out of action, but it quickly became apparent that pretty much all lines were affected.
Within half an hour, the city's rail network had all but ground to a halt, as thousands of commuters crowded onto train platforms and footpaths overflowed as others piled onto the bus network in a bid to get home.
The timing, just as the afternoon peak was kicking off, could not have been worse.
Neither could the location of the trouble.
At 2:30pm, the power connection device on a train at Strathfield Station had collided with overhead wires, bringing down a 1,500-volt electrical cable on the train roof.
The device is called a pantograph and it is the triangular-shaped apparatus that sticks up on the roof of the train, connecting the train's electrical system to the power running in the lines overhead.
It was the pantograph that got twisted in the overhead wire, bringing some of it down onto the train roof.
Response teams then began to remove 300 passengers from the train, along with passengers on two other trains where the power had also been switched off, Transport for NSW coordinator-general Howard Collins told the media at 4:30pm.
"The main west line in the Homebush area is completely closed down; the alternatives are very limited. I'd ask customers and passengers to be aware if you're not travelling, please do not do so on the rail network," he said.
Six rail tracks pass through Strathfield, which University of Sydney transport expert John Nelson said made it a "very, very vulnerable" point.
"When you have these maximum train movements and the largest number of people wanting to move, it's a classic example of a key bottleneck experiencing system failure."
Chief executive of Sydney Trains Matt Longland on Wednesday said power to all six of the tracks between Strathfield and Homebush had to be isolated.
Professor Nelson said the only way to alleviate a failure at a critical junction in a historical network like Sydney Trains was to have central interchanges to other transport modes.
"That's why it was useful last night that the transport authorities were able to say, you know, if you're going to the North Shore, use the Metro," he said.
Sydney's Metro lines are not connected to the rail lines and were unaffected by the shutdown, but only the city, north shore and inner south-west have Metro lines.
Mathew Hounsell, a transport researcher at UTS, said communication with the public about the outage was poor.
"They did not do that properly yesterday. The communication was not clear that the system was completely borked and we entered the station not knowing that," he said.
Professor Nelson agreed the public needed information on journey planning.
"Unfortunately, we're still not there because you could pick anybody's journey planner — you might have tried this yourself. It's still suggesting journeys that were never going to happen," he said.
Commuter Nicholas Turvey said he arrived at Parramatta Station and was not able to get near the ticket booths because of the crowds.
He was told by train conductors to find another mode of transport.
"But Ubers were surging with expensive prices, and the buses were delayed as well and they were looking like an hour and a half on the buses to get home," he said, with his sister coming to drive him home.
By 7pm, Transport for NSW was advising people not to travel on six of the Sydney train lines, with warnings of delays for the rest of the evening.
At 7:15pm, Sanju Abraham was waiting with more than 100 people at Ashfield Station for replacement buses to Lidcombe.
"We are waiting for almost one hour, and just one bus came," he said.
By 5:30am on Wednesday morning, workers were finishing the final inspections on the defective train and repairing the overhead wires before the power could be switched back on.
Passengers were told to avoid the train network and use alternative modes of transport, with most lines running trains at much reduced frequencies.
The power was switched back on at 7:20am, but the dye had been cast: The network would struggle for the day with minimal services and customers facing empty departure boards and little to access information.
Mr Longland told 702 ABC Radio Sydney that it was tricky to get info coded into the apps or onto station screens at the moment.
Premier Chris Minns has announced commuters would travel for free on Monday after the chaos that has plagued the Sydney rail network overnight and conceded something many commuters already knew — the network was "nowhere near good enough".
"In no way is that going to make up for the disruption of the last 24 hours, but hopefully it can go some way to alleviate the financial burden that families have had to deal with over the last day," Mr Minns said on Nine Radio.
Mr Minns said he would commission an independent "outside", "short and sharp" review of Sydney's transport system.
It would cover three areas — looking at the money already spent on maintenance and whether it was working as intended, punctuality on the network and communications from transport authorities.