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Good afternoon and welcome to our live coverage of Sydney’s train disruptions.
Every train line across Sydney faces significant delays and multiple cancellations as the Combined Rail Unions reinstate 10 key work bans.
Here’s everything you need to know this morning:
- Every line is impacted by cancellations and delays, with wait times of up to 48 minutes at some stations. The T4 Eastern Suburbs and Illawarra Line appears to be experiencing the worst impacts.
- More than 1000 services will be cancelled across the network by the end of the day. Metro and light rail services are unaffected.
- The delays and cancellations are caused by renewed work bans in place by the Combined Rail Union. Sydney Trains chief executive Matt Longland said a refusal by the Electrical Trades Union to carry out maintenance overnight was causing the worst of the delays.
- Some rail replacement buses are being organised, however, Transport for NSW has asked commuters to avoid travel and stay at home if possible.
- The government has offered the unions a 13 per cent pay rise, plus an extra 1 per cent from cost savings and an extra 1 per cent in super, over four years. The unions were given a Thursday deadline to give their response.
With the afternoon commute looming, workers who managed to make it into the office this morning are leaving now to get ahead of the mayhem, or plotting other routes home.
Monica tells us she got permission to go home early after hearing the worst could be yet to come in the Sydney Trains press conference earlier this afternoon. She’ll be travelling from her office in Rockdale to her home in West Ryde.
“Now I have a two-hour commute to catch two separate buses to go home,” she says.
The worst could be yet to come as commuter face the afternoon rush hour.Credit: Kate Geraghty
“Worst scenario, if the second bus is too full from Haymarket, I might have to catch the light rail to Circular Quay and then catch the ferry (which is an hour long) then walk 20 minutes to get home as a last resort!”
Tuan wrote in to say he might “just wait until midnight” to commute home from work.
“I have a late meeting anyway.”
But off-peak travellers aren’t having an easier time on the trains today. Nathan told the Herald his trip from North Strathfield to Central had already taken 1 hour and 45 minutes, and wasn’t over yet.
“Stuck somewhere between Newtown and Redfern the last 35 mins,” he wrote in at 2.35pm.
If audiovisual content is more your style, our social media team have got you covered with their coverage of the Sydney train chaos.
First thing this morning, social media producer Nadia Russell broke down the work bans and their impact on the network.
A little later, social media editor Meg Kanofski took us on her morning commute, illustrating the compounding transport delays on trains, buses and Ubers that commuters will likely face again this afternoon.
Our inbox is overflowing with tales from commuters stuck on trains for hours, or in some cases, forced to cancel or change plans because of the heavy delays to the rail network. Here’s a selection of their responses:
Good afternoon and welcome to our live coverage of Sydney’s train disruptions.
Every train line across Sydney faces significant delays and multiple cancellations as the Combined Rail Unions reinstate 10 key work bans.
Here’s everything you need to know this morning:
- Every line is impacted by cancellations and delays, with wait times of up to 48 minutes at some stations. The T4 Eastern Suburbs and Illawarra Line appears to be experiencing the worst impacts.
- More than 1000 services will be cancelled across the network by the end of the day. Metro and light rail services are unaffected.
- The delays and cancellations are caused by renewed work bans in place by the Combined Rail Union. Sydney Trains chief executive Matt Longland said a refusal by the Electrical Trades Union to carry out maintenance overnight was causing the worst of the delays.
- Some rail replacement buses are being organised, however, Transport for NSW has asked commuters to avoid travel and stay at home if possible.
- The government has offered the unions a 13 per cent pay rise, plus an extra 1 per cent from cost savings and an extra 1 per cent in super, over four years. The unions were given a Thursday deadline to give their response.
The Bureau of Meteorology is predicting a high chance of rain in Sydney this afternoon, which could put even more stress on the rail network.
The BOM is predicting a “very high chance of showers in the late afternoon and evening, the chance of a thunderstorm in the afternoon and evening, possibly severe”.
The extreme delays and cancellations experienced by commuters today are expected to continue for the rest of the working week.
“The advice that we’re receiving, particularly from the Electrical Trades Union is that there will be no movement on their work bans this evening, and that these sorts of delays that we’ve seen today will continue into the day tomorrow,” Sydney Trains chief executive Matt Longland said.
Sydney Trains chief executive Matt Longland.Credit: Rhett Wyman
“So we’re asking everyone to plan ahead. If you do need to travel tomorrow, keep up to date with the latest information. Use the travel apps to look at other modes of public transport that might be suitable to ensure that you can complete your trip in the most efficient way as possible.”
Longland said if maintenance work needed at Gosford tonight is not completed, additional disruptions could be experienced on the Central Coast line tomorrow.
The afternoon commute home is set to be worse than this morning with more than 1000 services set to be cancelled by the end of the day.
The government is considering legal options amid the “intolerable” union work bans, Transport Minister Jo Haylen said.
“By the end of the day, we’ll see more than 1000 train services cancelled, including significant delays. We are seeing the situation get worse across the network,” Haylen said.
Sydney Trains is expecting 80 per cent of services to be cancelled or delayed during the afternoon peak.
“As we look towards the afternoon and evening, the scenario is going to get worse in terms of train and crew availability, and we also see some inclement weather on the horizon, which may make afternoon travel even more difficult,” Transport for NSW Secretary Josh Murray said.
Acting Premier Penny Sharpe, Transport Minister Jo Haylen, Transport for NSW Secretary Josh Murray and Sydney Trains Chief Executive Matt Longland provided an update on Sydney’s train pain this afternoon.
You can watch the press conference below.
Stuck on a crawling Blue Mountains train and watching his work start time approaching, Mitchell Isaacs thought it would probably be quicker just to run to the office. So he did.
Mitchell Isaacs left his delayed train and ran to the office instead.
After getting on the train at Warrimoo in the Blue Mountains at 7.30am, the train kept stopping for long period of time at stations.
When the train stopped at Wentworthville at around 9am, Isaacs decided to ditch the delayed train and instead get changed into his active wear and run the rest of the 3.5 kilometres to his Parramatta office.
He made it to the office before many of his colleagues who were either hours late, or simply turned around and went home.
“It’s disruptive, the train I was on ended up getting to Central about three hours late,” he said.
“We’re reconsidering various meetings for the rest of the week.”
Sydney’s business lobby group has warned the city’s trouble-plagued train network is on a “countdown to even more chaos” weeks before thousands of school students rejoin the daily throng of commuters.
Business Sydney executive director Paul Nicolaou says the state government and rail unions must resolve the protracted industrial dispute “well before” children return to school from January 30.
Commuters were delayed by several hours on Wednesday. Credit: Steven Siewert
“Today is bad enough on the heavy rail network with the impact of work bans by the combined rail unions but imagine what it will be like when thousands of school students return,” he said.
“Sydney is on a countdown to even more transport chaos if the rail dispute is still going when schools resume at the end of January.”
The business group said many of the half a million children enrolled in Sydney’s schools would rely on trains to get to and from school each day.
“This campaign has been going on for months. The public is fed up,” Nicolaou said today.
“They cannot be subjected to the delays and service cancellations that are dogging the system today with no resolution in sight.”
