By Rowan Forster
A Pakenham traveller has shared his three-hour “commute from hell” amid growing angst over Melbourne’s substandard rail services – exacerbated by equipment faults and signalling failures.
Rory Harkley, who works on Collins Street in the city’s CBD, endured a 190 minute trek to get home to Pakenham last week.
He missed football training for a second consecutive week due to the delays and was questioned by his coach as to why he was absent.
Mr Harkley is one of a growing number of train boarders, furious at the lack of punctuality on the Pakenham/Cranbourne line.
The network ground to a halt on three separate occasions last week, forcing passengers to endure agonising waits on jam-packed platforms in the blistering heat.
According to Mr Harkley, who was lost in a sea of furious commuters, there were no alternatives.
“I tried to book an Uber but the surcharge was four times the regular rate, and I was quoted $240 to get a ride home,” he said.
“After about an hour I’d had enough and I tried to book it, and then I was cancelled on by three separate drivers.
“They were obviously just overwhelmed by the sheer number of people trying to do the same thing.”
It comes after Public Transport Victoria statistics, released this month, revealed four services, on average, were abruptly cancelled on the Pakenham train line every day in December.
A staggering 376 services were late and 123 were cancelled, resulting in Metro Trains falling substantially short of its performance benchmark.
An investigation has been launched into train infrastructure faults at two Melbourne train stations that saw commuters face lengthy delays of up to two hours during peak hour last week.
The faults came after weeks of works, as part of Victoria’s Big Build project.
Commuters were offered free travel for the first three weeks of December while trains weren’t running during a major construction blitz.
The works reportedly upgraded power, signalling and 80 kilometres of overhead wiring for the new high-capacity trains, which will run between Pakenham and the city from next year.
