Oz Trains..

"Aussie trains among worlds worse" was on the headlines this week.. Oh why doesn't this surprise me..

Where do I start.. It was found that "SYDNEY'S train system boasted performance levels hopelessly below every major city from Europe to South America, according to a damning independent report yet to be presented by CityRail."

"Rail experts from Hong Kong were paid by CityRail to compare Sydney with metro systems around the world for efficiency, cost effectiveness, reliability and maintenance."

As I'm no expert in trains, I won't comment on reliability, maintenance and cost effectiveness. Efficiency wise, I have a thing or two to talk about. Trains in Sydney are double decker. Whilst in theory, it can carry more people per carriage, it is actually not designed to handle peak hour traffic.

Whys that? First of all, the design of the carriages centers on a spacious ideology with plenty of space and minimal poles. That may have worked 20 years ago, but given the sharp rise of population density in Sydney CBD, the design should focus on supporting plenty of standing passengers given the limited space on train carriages.

Secondly, the seating arrangement on the top and bottom levels is, again, very inefficient. If the floor plans accounted room for standing passengers, they could easily fit loads more in the same space. Obviously I'm not saying we should strip the seats, but the current isle are way too small to accommodate standing passengers resulting in underutilization of 2 level carriage design.

Finally, with lack of poles in the main carriage area, standing passengers cling to the few poles available which happens to be near the door exits. This creates a bottleneck in the carriage, significantly slowing the in and out flow of passengers. Nice design City Rail.