By Lynda Myer
Although following the historic inauguration of Australia’s first driverless metro in 2019, the Metro North West Line has delivered over 42 million customer trips and has retained an overall customer satisfaction index of 98 percent, Sydney Metro‘s next committee is to ensure the operator of the Metro North West Line. Currently, Metro Trains Sydney continues to deliver safe and reliable journeys for customers who rely on public transport services in North West Sydney.
Due to a systems communications failure on Monday 14 March 2022, an unacceptable level of disruption resulted in customers’ experience.
Approximately 180 customers on three trains were affected by the incident which began at 4.36 pm. Metro Trains Sydney staff progressively assisted customers off trains and onto stations platforms from approximately 45 minutes to two hours after trains were first delayed.
According to Sydney Metro’s announcement, the delay in disembarking passengers was not acceptable, therefore after a survey into the incident they confirm some improvements to Metro Trains Sydney practices which include:
- Improved staff deployment to respond faster to incidents;
- Recruiting an extra four customer information officers to improve information on service changes and disruption;
- Recruiting an incident planning manager to build operator capabilities;
- Additional major incident drills and exercises;
- Increased flexibility to respond and recover from an incident when there is a service disruption.
Presenting people in the North West access to fast, reliable public transport for the first time, the Metro North West Line has improved the way people move around Sydney.
Providing over than 99% of services in headway tolerance and more than 98% of journey times that were under 37 minutes, were the services which have been presented in the month following the incident.
