Sydney train delays LIVE updates: Service disruptions continue across network after live wire falls on train at Strathfield

Passengers at Lidcombe waiting for city bound replacement buses have been stuck in lines snaking around the street for hours.

It took more than an hour for vacuum repairer Greg Drinan to finally reach the front of the queue.

“It’d be about an hour, because the queue starts about 400 metres down that way,” he said.

“I should’ve been at work an hour and a half ago.”

While his usual commute from Lidcombe to Eastwood usually takes 30 to 45 minutes, Drinan expects his commute time to have tripled today.

“Normally, it’s less than an hour, so just waiting here alone is probably three times the commute.”

Tradie Frank Liu made plans to start work later, at 9.30am, hoping to avoid the crush of passengers during peak hour, but at 9.15am he was still waiting, with no end in sight.

“It’s a headache. It’s a disaster,” he said.

“Yesterday I saw lots of people frustrated. They were very, very frustrated. They feel hopeless, angry … the train services have made us not happy.

“Sometimes the bus cannot take more passengers, passengers are not happy … I gave up, I just called my friends. I called the boss to arrange for someone to pick me up.”

It was calm but fairly organised chaos at Ashfield station this morning.

Both express and all-stops trains are leaving from the station, although the intervals are uncertain and passengers are often changing platforms.

Trains are also heading outbound to Hornsby via Strathfield, unlike two hours earlier. The delays and detours are being felt here.

One passenger, Hartwing Lupeitu’u, was up at 4am and out the door quickly, but encountered long lines and “too many people” at Lidcombe at 6am.

He laughed that he had been worried about being fired, but said his boss assured him “as long as you get to work” he’d be fine.

“And now I’m still waiting,” he said.

Another commuter said his usual 35-minute commute home on Tuesday took about five hours as he got stuck at Summer Hill for two hours.

From Ashfield to his house took three long, slow bus rides that had left him with an aching back.

He left for work about 5am and was already four hours into his commute when he was able to jump on an express to the city.

It’s a hectic morning at Central Station as frantic workers and students run from packed trains arriving in the city late.

Platforms 16 and 17 to City Circle and Hornsby were a shoulder-to-shoulder affair just after 9am, with commuters struggling to fit on the platforms.

On other platforms, Inner West trains arrived almost empty, while trains from Penrith arrived without an inch of space to move for cramped commuters.

Student Meg Whittaker wasn’t expecting last night’s disruptions to continue this morning when she arrived at Penrith station for her 7am Blue Mountains line train and ended up stuck at Blacktown for 40 minutes.

“They mentioned it was something to do with signals not working,” she said.

“I have friends who left Central at 3pm yesterday and didn’t get home until 8pm.”

Meg missed her morning lecture.

Spare a thought for tourists trying to catch trains today as well – we spotted a few groups of confused families moving from platform to platform, unable to understand the platform announcements.

At Sydenham station, the inner west’s entry point to the metro, things are relatively calm.

The queue to enter the metro platform, which is normally thick at this time, is long but moving quickly, and additional staff appear to be on hand.

Commuters on this route are already used to disruption in the form of Sydenham to Bankstown replacement buses, as the line is converted for the metro.

Some inner west residents may have followed the government’s advice to avoid travel and work from home instead of taking the metro.

T4 services are running as normal from Sydenham, but there’s some confusion on the T8 Line, which is running at a reduced service.

The information boards say it is leaving at platform 3, but that platform is blocked off.

On platform 4, where the train is actually running, Tom Hinks says he only needs to travel one stop to St Peters after catching the replacement bus from Marrickville.

Yesterday, his 30-minute commute took two hours, but he doesn’t have the choice to avoid travel today.

“I run a warehouse, so I’ve got to be on site,” he said.

While many office workers will today turn on their laptops and settle in for a work-from-home day, not everyone has this luxury.

For Tom Yousif, who installs art in galleries, train delays mean a day without pay.

“I don’t have any other way to get to work, I’m a casual worker, so I’m going to lose my whole day’s wage,” Yousif said.

“How long is this even going to go on for? I believe we should be compensated. The train system in Australia might as well be redundant, there’s no point for it because these problems are going to keep arising.”

Yousif, who was trying to get to Parramatta from Leichhardt, said he has given up on the system.

“There seriously needs to be a reevaluation of the Sydney train system. For an international city, it’s quite ridiculous,” he said.

“It’s horrible. The system is costing me money.

“For people who work full-time, it’s different for them, they can work from home and they still get paid for a day like this, but for someone like me, I have no reassurance like that at all.”

Is your Uber trip costing you double what it normally would, despite the government saying the ride-sharing company had agreed to put a cap its surge pricing?

Here’s the bad news: the fare being double its usual cost is the cap on surge pricing.

Surge pricing is Uber’s basic demand-and-supply system. It increases prices in areas where there is higher demand to attract drivers to those areas.

But during a very similar network-wide meltdown in March 2023, prices on Ubers skyrocketed, and the company was accused of profiting from the distress of Sydney commuters.

So the government shortly after entered into an agreement with Uber that would limit surge pricing.

But the crucial question: by how much? Neither the government nor Uber wanted to say – until, when pressed by journalists, then-transport minister Jo Haylen conceded costs could be double normal fares.

She said the government was not subsiding the cap, but the agreement gave Uber “reputational protection”.

The scene at Lidcombe Station this morning is chaos.

Commuters hoping to get on a city-bound train are instead being greeted with lines for replacement buses that are hundreds of metres long.

All services from Lidcombe have been cancelled, and disgruntled-looking commuters travelling towards the city are waiting in lines that wrap around multiple corners of the street.

Replacement buses are few and far between, shuttling only a handful of the potentially thousands of passengers in line each time to Ashfield.

Commuters have been told to change at Ashfield for train services towards the city.