Victoria’s public rail transport providers continued an upward trend in punctuality and reliability improvements in the month of July, with Public Transport Victoria figures showing some of the best results so far this year.
Yarra Trams delivered 85.6% of its services on-time in July, surpassing the June result, which had been its best of the year. At 98.7%, overall service reliability remained above the contract-enforced target for a seventh successive month.
PTV chief Jeroen Weimar said that the addition of new trams to Yarra’s fleet and the ongoing refurbishment programme would have a significant long-term impact on Melbourne’s services.
“Alongside rolling out 80 new E-Class trams onto our network, we have also begun work to refurbish 450 trams in our existing fleet which will deliver better reliability and an improved passenger experience long term,” he said.
“More and more people are relying on our public transport network to get them where they need to go, we are focused on ensuring we are delivering the service they expect and deserve.”
Metro Trains Melbourne posted an overall punctuality result of 92.5% for its services, exceeding its target and a significant increase on the figure achieved in the same month last year (89.8%).
The Sandringham and Glen Waverly lines were the best performers, with 96.9% and 96.3% of these lines’ services arriving on time, respectively, while the lowest figure came from the Belgrave Line, with 88.2% of its services running on time.
The operator also bettered its reliability target (the percentage of timetabled services that actually ran during the month) of 98.5%, posting a result of 98.6%.
Reliability on Victoria’s regional lines was also up on the previous two months, with a result of 96.7%. This included nine of V/Line’s 11 lines exceeding the 96% target. Punctuality has continued to rise on V/Line services over the past three months, from 79.3% in May to 85.9% in July.
The network’s three busiest lines – Geelong, Ballarat and Bendigo – saw punctuality improvements, with the Geelong Line posting a result of 90.5%, its highest over the last 12 months. The Ballarat Line has improved markedly over the past three months, rising from 77.4% in May to 85.9% in July.
“Together the Geelong, Ballarat and Bendigo lines make up more than two thirds of all V/Line services so punctuality improvements on these lines give a good reflection of how we are tracking overall,” Weimar explained.
As in June, the Bairnsdale Line was once again the worst-performing, with only 49.3% of train services running on time. This, however, is a substantial improvement upon the May result of 27.7%.