When I visited Sydney a few years ago, I paid a visit to their then-newest railway line – the Epping-Chatswood link. Running the entire way in tunnels between said stations, the line has three intermediate stations, all located deep underground: North Ryde, Macquarie Park, and Macquarie University. So how do passengers reach them?
A few weeks I made a flying visit to Sydney, as I made my way home to Melbourne from Cairns. I might have only spent an hour at Sydney Airport while I waited for my connecting flight, but I did manage to see a few trains along the way.
As somebody who has grown up with a public transport ticketing system that lets you ride the entire network with a single ticket, Sydney’s service disruption messages focus on something that is apparently trivial – where your ticket is valid. So why is this so important?
What happens when a bus breaks down? You send in one bad-ass looking tow truck to haul away.
There are two reasons why catching the train on a weekend is often a pain – railway operators use it as an opportunity to replace and upgrade infrastructure while minimising the disruption to passengers, and when the trains do run, you have to wait longer at the station because fewer services are timetabled. Despite this, Melbourne seems to be a lot worser off than our northern neighbours in Sydney.
