These days train travel is a rarity.
Ten, maybe a dozen times a year at most.
But this week it poured.
First, Wednesday night we caught trains to get to Olympic Park for the World Cup qualifier with Honduras.
Getting there was easy.
But thanks to a fallen tree on the track at Wollstonecraft on the North Shore line and a signals failure on the western line, it took us almost three hours to get home, well after midnight.
Then on Friday it was a lazy, one train ride from Leumeah to Town Hall for lunch at Centrepoint and back.
So one horror experience and one good, a 1-1 draw you could say.
Now I know that a new timetable is on the way and certainly am not going to prejudge that.
But the state opposition claims some direct services to places like Parramatta and Blacktown will be cut and if that’s even partly true it’s a poor show from the government.
Blind Freddy knows that we need more transport here, not less.
It really beggars belief that in 2017 we can still be talking about how west and south west Sydney are the transport infrastructure have-nots.
Yet the government is pouring billions into more infrastructure in the heart of Sydney, where you can’t move for the public transport available.
But guess what this dimwitted government is doing our way: forcing our councils to approve high rise apartments along the railway line to house tens and tens of thousands of people.
Which is all very well, because we all know the Sydney metropolitan area will massively grow in the next 40 years.
Sydney by 2050 could be the home of 10 million people.
Private cars aren’t going to get all those people around to their jobs or university or shopping.
Plentiful public transport will be the only realistic way to move 10 million people around.
And yet the current mob in Macquarie Street have as much vision as the guy in the Specsavers ad.
They won’t commit to building a rail line to the Western Sydney airport when it’s ready in 2025, nor to extending the south west line to Camden, Narellan and back to Campbelltown.
Guess where they are thinking of spending a couple of billion dollars on – football stadiums.
Maybe all that money they raised from selling poles and wires and a few other government businesses has gone to the heads.
The next election is not too far away – March 2019 – so fingers crossed they may come to their senses in the next 12 months.
agree that u push for more rail lines but train services to the city from Minto are amazingly good… https://t.co/4jlXZKASlp
This is another example of cruel neglect of Labor voting seats by this Liberal Government and the people of Campbelltown MacArthur will get no consideration until they get a Labor Government in both state and federal so we must work hart to get this over the next two years
I think it’s just neglect of public transport to be honest as we have had periods with a labor state and federal government with no improvement in infrastructure.
The south west of Sydney has been developed very rapidly with governments unwilling to say no to developers and look at possible infrastructure issues that will arise from this growth.