UNRULY passengers getting in disputes and stealing are being partially blamed by V/Line after the punctuality of the Bendigo-Melbourne line dipped to its second lowest point since May last year.
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The ‘on-time performance’ for October dropped to 88.6 per cent – below its target of 92 per cent and 12-month average of 91.9 per cent.
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V/Line spokesperson Ebony Jordan said train faults were the main reason for delays to Bendigo services last month.
“Such defects are reported back to V/Line fleet engineers for investigation and action,” she said.
“They assess if there are any improvements which can be made to prevent further disruptions from occurring.”
Jordan said signal faults were also a contributing factor.
“There were also a couple of instances of unruly passengers on board Bendigo services, which meant trains had to be held until police attended,” she said.
One of those instances occurred occurred on October 23 when a V/Line train was held at Sunshine Station following a report of theft on board the service.
“We notified police and because the train had to be held, it resulted in other services that use that section of track also being delayed,” Jordan said.
“These types of incidents can have flow on effects to other services until we’re given the all clear to resume train running.”
Another incident occurred in Castlemaine. A dispute broke out after a passenger tried to board a busy train with a bike, throwing another passenger’s bags out of the luggage compartment to make room.
“The customer who owned the luggage was very upset about this happening to their belongings,” Jordan said.
“The situation was managed by the conductor but can cause delays to that service and others scheduled around the same time.”
Jordan said the safety and security of staff and passengers was V/Line’s number one priority, but said the corporation recognised more needed to be done to meet its punctuality target
A train is considered on-time on the Bendigo line when it departs within 5 minutes 59 seconds from its schedule.
“While there is room for improvement, the October figure is about 4 percentage points higher than July, which was the first full month of operation on the Regional Rail Link,” she said.
A train is considered on-time on the Bendigo line when it departs within 5 minutes 59 seconds from its schedule.
V/Line also measures ‘reliability’ – measuring the number of trains which are cancelled.
Reliability on the Bendigo line for September was 98.7 per cent, which exceeded the target of 96.
V/Line offers compensation when it falls short of the punctuality target and reminded passengers to visit its website to see if they are entitled to performance compensation.
See performance statistics by clicking here.