Over the last few months we have been trialling a new service from Penrith to North Sydney in the morning. We are now in a position to make this a permanent new service every weekday from Monday 12 February.

The new fast train will depart Penrith at 8.56am, stop at Central at 9.55am and arrive at North Sydney at 10.07am and then back to Central at 10.30am.

The improving reliability of services since the introduction of the new timetable in 2005/2006 has seen 136,000 new customers choose to travel with CityRail every week.

This new service is one part of our long-term plan to meet that increasing demand. Other initiatives will include additional carriages being added to some peak hour services, and other new services being provided across the network as Sydney’s latest state-of-the-art Oscar trains are progressively delivered throughout the year.

Future improvements to our services include:

• new train services on the Western, Illawarra, Campbelltown, Bankstown and North Shore lines during the morning and evening peaks;

• building up four six-car train services to eight-car trains to provide additional peak seating capacity between Campbelltown, Liverpool, Granville and the City;

• providing up to three additional trains to give a 30-minute frequency all day between Campbelltown, Glenfield, Liverpool, Parramatta and Blacktown;

• building up four existing six-car train services to eight-car train services to provide extra seats between Chatswood, North Sydney, the City, Parramatta, Blacktown, Penrith and Richmond during the morning and evening peaks; and

• a new South Coast service between Kiama, Dapto, Wollongong and the city in the late morning as well as 430 extra seats on an existing four-car evening peak service between the City, Wollongong and Port Kembla.