Bondi’s weekend trains boosted

It’s not every day that a newspaper has a good news story on public transport.

About a year ago the Bondi View reported on the dangerous situation on busy weekend beach days when too many people were cramming onto a platform at Bondi Junction Station waiting for one of the four trains that run each hour – a frequency that former Transport Minister Michael Costa (“people love to drive”) had decreed was right for Bondi.

Now they enjoy a better service, with an increase from four trains per hour to seven.

A lot of action behind the scenes served to correct the former unsatisfactory situation.

Coogee MP Paul Pearce made representations beginning with a transport forum of locals on a range of transport concerns. Senior government officers were there to listen and copious notes were taken.

Also, a little known forum, the Commuter Council, has passenger feedback committees, and the one for rail is valued by senior railway officers for its identification of problem areas. The eastern suburbs representative raised the beach day problem caused by “Costa’s cutbacks” and suggested the insertion of two shuttle trains from Bondi Junction to Central to restore the 10-minute service.

And, who knows, maybe the Bondi View story about the crowded platforms helped to prod some action.

But, sadly, the railways do not have a free hand.  The NSW Treasury is notoriously anti-public transport.  Railways are seen as an unnecessary expense so the shuttle service to Central proposal may well have been stymied by Treasury.

Fortunately, miles away, the line to Cronulla, to which many Bondi trains travel, was being duplicated.  Built in the 1930s, there still remained sections of single track, the cause of many late running trains.

With the work almost complete, senior rail officers drew up a plan to increase the number of Cronulla trains from two an hour to four, keeping the two per hour which already ran from Waterfall.   They cheekily threw in the hourly runs which come all the way from Kiama, which normally finish among the country trains at Central.

Rail chiefs waited until the eve of an election and sprang the plan. With politicians alerted to the scheme, this time Treasury could do nothing.

So now, incredibly, beach goers are, just once an hour, gobsmacked by the large cushy seats on the brand new trains from Kiama (pictured) they sometimes discover on their short trip to Bondi.

Thank heavens for elections.