Gippsland rail services
Melina BATH (Eastern Victoria) (17:25): (120) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Public Transport in the other place and relates to the Gippsland V/Line rail service. Last Thursday night my constituents, a family, were one of the many families in Victoria who wanted to travel to the G to watch their football team play. They were keen to avoid the Monash Freeway and the night works that we often see on that link, so they checked at the Traralgon railway station the day prior whether the train was running, the bus was running et cetera. They were assured that the train was going to run to Melbourne and from Melbourne, so they caught the train at 4 o’clock, ready for round 1. Forty minutes into the train journey they were informed by a V/Line employee that there was no return train. What that meant was that at the end of their football match they scrambled and had to fly, as it were, by foot to Southern Cross station to catch the bus back home. They made it just in time to catch the 10:59 bus back to Traralgon. They sat in the railway station for 30 minutes, and then the journey that normally would take 2 hours from Melbourne to Traralgon took 4 hours. What sort of a disincentive is that for families to catch public transport and take their cars off the road? It is no incentive at all.
V/Line often spruiks reliability and punctuality. Well, let us look at punctuality. The V/Line train service has not met any punctuality targets for decades – nor reliability targets. I may be slightly exaggerating, but it has been years and years. In fact in February their punctuality was down to 79.6 per cent on the V/Line Gippsland line. The website talks about the importance of reliability and punctuality. The only time that the V/Line Gippsland line met its punctuality target was in January this year, when there were no trains running. So you have got punctuality on a V/Line line when there are no trains running and it is school holidays.
Georgie Crozier: It’s like a dead fish.
Melina BATH: Indeed. Yes, they are not resting, they are just unwell. Now, the bottom line is my constituents are frustrated. They want to catch public transport. The action I seek from the minister is to prioritise the improvement of the Gippsland line so that families can travel down and back by rail and to finish these Gippsland rail upgrades, which are taking an eternity.