Train Services in Chaos, Inner West Buses Next
As Sydney’s train services descend into chaos, the Minister for Transport is still refusing to back down from his disastrous decision to privatise inner west buses.
Inner West Mayor Darcy Byrne said that Minister Constance had failed to respond to calls from the Council to focus on improving the existing services, rather than privatising them.
“Having thrown Sydney’s train services into a state of chaos, the Transport Minister is planning to do the same to inner west bus services next,” he said.
“He can’t make government controlled trains run on time so how can anyone believe the minister’s claims that our bus services will be maintained after he’s flogged them off to private operators?”.
The minister has blamed late running buses to justify the decision to privatise inner west bus services.
However, inner west buses consistently out-perform the running time of services in the eastern suburbs.
On time running services for Region 6 (inner west) services improved steadily over 2017, from 87.1% to 91.3%.
Bus region 9 (eastern suburbs) over the same time period had a run to time rating of 84.3% to 86.8%. The eastern suburbs services have not been targeted for privatisation.
“Minister Constance is trying to rip off the inner west, this is just a blatant bias,” said Cr Byrne.
“Despite our calls, Minister Constance’s department is yet to provide any guarantee that the bus services, jobs and routes will be protected into the future.
“As with the train debacle, the cost of privatisation of our buses will be borne by the commuters, pensioners and students who rely on them.”