V/Line services
Ms BRITNELL (South-West Coast) (09:43): In late July about a hundred passengers were stranded on board a V/Line train from Warrnambool to Melbourne, some of them for up to 8 hours. A damaged boom gate at North Shore affected 55 services, but a further breakdown in communication between V/Line’s operations centre and staff on the ground led to extended delays for the Warrnambool passengers. V/Line’s CEO apologised, calling the delay ‘embarrassing and not good enough’. Impacted travellers were offered compensation. While mistakes can happen, the reliability of V/Line services over the recent months has been terrible. In late June a communications fault was blamed for a shutdown of the entire V/Line network that cancelled dozens of services during the morning peak and left thousands of passengers from across Victoria stranded at platforms. In late May every line in the V/Line network was brought to a standstill due to rail faults, train breakdowns and scheduled works. Regional Victorians deserve a quality reliable public transport service to Melbourne, but that is not what this government is providing. We have learned that the VLocity trains we have long been promised will have less seats and no catering service, and track upgrades will mean new rolling stock will only be able to travel at the same speed as the current diesel trains, 115 kilometres an hour. Regional Victorians are again being short-changed by a government whose commitment to quality rail services is completely off the rails.