Image: Image: Transport for NSW
By Will Thorpe
In Sydney, a city with an increasingly train-centric culture, the rails go quiet from midnight. A few trains are running an hour later as they complete their rosters; not long after that – except for a few intercity services – you’re out of luck.
As such, you may find yourself standing in the winter cold or summer warmth, waiting for a bus to whisk you down the city’s deserted thoroughfares. Alas, it wasn’t always this way.
NightRide, Sydney’s somewhat squalid late-night train replacement bus service, was introduced in 1989 to take over from trains in those desolate hours. The NightRide map is a mutated reflection of the city’s railways, as if from an alternative reality in which Haberfield and Broadway have stations of their own.
Though one might think that replacing trains with buses is a remarkable step back towards the Philistine age, the service actually foreshadowed future reality with its inclusion of a stop at Five Dock which will be served by the Metro West line.
One inadequacy of NightRide buses is the liberality with which they follow railway corridors. Often, catching a bus after a night out in Newtown requires walking twenty minutes from the centrally-located station to a bus stop on Parramatta Road.
Calls For Late-Night Train Service
A call for the government to consider re-expanding late-night train service came in 2014, when chief executive of the Tourism and Transport Forum Ken Morrison opined that trains ”are user-friendly and reliable and therefore more attractive” than buses.
There are, however, arguments against doing this. Some, understandably, report feeling safer on late-night buses than on almost-empty trains; that is not to say that NightRide buses are always pleasant. Late nights provide time for trackwork. Also, running trains is a costly endeavour, and there has to be some degree of patronage to justify them over buses.
There has been some movement in that direction, however, in line with the turn towards investment in public transport and trains in particular which began over a decade ago. In April, the Inner West Light Rail was at last allowed to stay up two hours later, with services now finishing at 1 am.
In the past, though, light rail ran 24/7 between Central and The Star. Sydney’s light rail lines are not covered by NightRide, excepting the N61 route serving the Carlingford line which is now part of the soon-to-be-opened Parramatta Light Rail.
Night Tube
London has gone a little further, introducing the Night Tube in 2016 to provide overnight trains on Friday and Saturday nights. Transport for London (TfL) expected this to produce 1,965 permanent jobs both in the operation of late-night services and in the support they give for the night-time economy.
Time savings from the service were predicted to average twenty minutes but extend up to an hour. In Sydney, while travelling by train from Town Hall to Penrith takes about an hour, by NightRide it takes an hour and three quarters.
Were late-night trains to be expanded, reduced frequencies could be entertained. A half-hourly frequency, which is half of the usual baseline, could imaginably suffice. Express trains could be cut back. This would go some way to reducing the expense of running trains in these hours. Where trackwork has to be carried out, trains may be replaced with buses.
Safety Concerns
However, this doesn’t fully resolve the concerns about safety. If this cannot be resolved and people continue to feel safer on buses late at night, there can be little argument for eliminating NightRide. Safety crossed TFL’s mind, and all stations remain staffed overnight when trains are running.
Writing an assessment of the Night Tube, University of Westminster Senior Lecturer in Transport Planning Enrica Papa was non-committal in judgement. Trains are fast, cheap for riders, eco-friendly, good for mobility, and good for the economy. Running them at night may also lead to more revellers creating an annoyance for tired inner-city residents, increased property prices, and more people having to work when they would rather hit the sack.
Doctor Geoffrey Clifton is a Senior Lecturer in Transport and Logistics Management at the Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies – which helped set up NightRide – at the University of Sydney Business School. Late-night public transport “is sometimes great, often bad, and sometimes missing altogether,” he observes. He notes that late-night trains prior to the introduction of NightRide primarily served night workers, as well as early starters and revellers.
What changed? “Firstly, more night workers were driving so there were fewer passengers on overnight trains. Secondly, crime fears meant passengers and staff wanted security at every station and on every train. Finally, trains and tracks need maintenance [and] stopping trains overnight creates a block of time where [sic] no trains are running and maintenance can be done.”
The Convenience Of Late Night Trains
While there was reason for the curtailing of late-night trains, Clifton believes Sydney can do better. “There are many parts of Sydney which miss out on night services and many of the overnight bus services are not part of the NightRide network so it is not well integrated and not well advertised. London does much better with an integrated Night Bus network with special bus stop signs and maps showing all the overnight public transport options. Many American cities have Night Owl or Blue Night services which are also very well publicised.”
In 2020, then-transport minister Andrew Constance observed that Sydney had become a “train city” with Sydneysiders opting for public transport in droves. The broad picture is of ever more of the city being connected by rail, while some new NightRide routes have been introduced in the past decade, including one serving the metro route to Tallawong.
The extension of the Inner West Light Rail’s operating hours has helped me commute home from work in Rozelle. But, don’t forget the Australian bargain – less of a nightlife, so that everyone can sleep. I suppose that’s why we like the convenience of late-night trains, too.
