Friday 3 March 2006

Since the introduction of the new timetable in September, more than 90,000 additional customers are travelling with CityRail every week. That has resulted in 1.4 million extra journeys, compared with the same period in 2004.

These new figures follow the first independent study of the new timetable, which found train users were reporting better service and punctuality.

The increases include:

• CBD up 4.2% or 24,000 passengers a week
• Western Line up 3.8% or 21,400 passengers a week
• Inner West up 4.0% or 14,700 passengers a week
• South Line up 2.8% or 12,300 passengers a week
• Main North Line up 3.5% or 9000 passengers a week
• East Hills Line up 4.8% or 6400 passengers a week
• Bankstown Line up 2.4% or 5800 passengers a week

The increase across the busiest metropolitan lines doesn’t include the thousands of Pensioner Excursion Tickets sold each week.

Measures taken to further improve capacity across the network include:

• A new morning express service from Sutherland catering for an extra 1000 passengers;
• an extra evening peak service from Chatswood to Penrith via the CBD that leaves the city at around 6.35pm;
• additional cars will be added to certain evening peak services as part of a $439.4 million roll out; and
• the new $2 billion Epping to Chatswood Rail Link that will create room for an extra 12,000 passengers.

In total $1.7 billion will be spent this financial year to improve rail infrastructure - or $4.6 million a day.