Connex. Again!!!
I thought I would begin and say thankyou Connex for providing an increasingly pathetic train service. Just when I thought it could not get any worse or less value for money you manage to sink yourselves to a new low. It bewilders me how your prices can rise yet your service get worse?
Connex, I am sick to death of being ripped off! How you get away with running your service the way you do is beyond me. Why is it so hard to run this service at an acceptable level? Or are all of you just simply incapable at doing your job?
Not once but twice this week Connex has made me late for work for exactly the same reason and it would seem that no matter how many times this is brought up, you either simply ignore it, make an excuse or just not care about it at all.
To explain my situation, I board or should I say, try to board the 8.21am train at Anstey station on the Upfield line. Twice this week the train has arrived with only three carraiges and bursting at the seams. Now I am no rocket scientist, but it would occur to me that this is not an adequate size train for this time of the morning considering that there are anywhere between 40 - 60 people waiting to board. Not to mention the other stations ahead of us where there are more people trying to get on.
Of course, as you would imagine, it was impossible to board these trains. However, being so close to Sydney Rd, we have the option of trams. Unfortunately, due to Connex being totally inept and causing this situation, everybody who cannot board the train heads straight to the tram trying not to be late for work. If going to work is not bad enough, we cannot board our train as there is no room and if you are lucky to get on a tram, you are squashed in like a sardine and in turn late for work. What a wonderful way to start the day!
Also, providing a train every 20 minutes on such a busy line is grossly inadequate. So my question is this: When oh when, are Connex going to fix this deplorable service? And please do not give me excuses like telling me that you are waiting to purchase more trains. If any one of you had the slightest piece of insight, you would have forseen this problem before it occured and prepared yourselves a lot better but I guess that would be too much to ask as you did not forsee the growth in use of your network over the past couple of years, which you actually stated in the news and papers. Was it too difficult to look at Melbourne's population growth and determine that the current system was going to be unable handle it? Or does your system have to be immensly overburdened for you to take notice and realise something needs to be done? It would seem at this stage, neither.
If you cannot deal with this situation or are simply unprepared to, please hand over or sell the network to someone who can operate it with some sort of competency because it is abundently clear that you unable to provide us at the very least, an average public train service.
Yours frustratingly,
Ross Hughes.
2 comments:
Top marks, Hulkster. To make it worse, I had nearly the exact same thing happen to me on my way home tonight.
The worst part about it is that the state government is going to release all this land for sale in the outer suburbs. The line to South Morang, for example, should have been finished years ago. Now they're gouing to have to complete it as far as Whittlesea.
Unfortunately, they can't run a more frequent service on the Upfield line at the moment,
partly because the track between Gowrie and Upfield is only a single line and trains cannot be reversed quickly enough for a service that is more frequent than 20 minutes, and partly because the City Loop cannot cope with the increased frequency of trains due to the crap signalling.
There's no flyover after McCauley station on the Upfield line, so trains can't be sent directly to/from Spencer St Station regularly (depending on loop direction/time of day). Hence, if they wanted a higher frequency of Upfield trains, they'd have to send Werribee trains directly to/from Spencer St, and then all those people would bitch and moan about having to change at North Melbourne to get to the loop (despite the fact that people have been doing a similar sort of thing at Richmond for decades).
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