Parramatta Stadium Rebuild and other stuff

[Gronk]

Yep.
Absolutely no way that the new Sydney Fish Market will become a tourist attraction as some clown suggested here recently.
Completely no chance of that happening.
Anyhow, another amazing piece of infrastructure that the previous govt instigated regardless of ignorant views.

In the meantime.....Enjoy.

She’s a big girl. I was at the old FM over easter and took it all in.

 

[Suitman]

Seriously, when will this shite ever end? The RTBU can go and gf'ed.
Sydney finally gets a modern rail system which has been massively successful, yet this is still happening, and the demands just keep coming.

Industrial action could hit the Metro network from August under wage despite
The union that brought the rail network to its knees is demanding drivers’ cabins on driverless trains. Here is why.

James O'Doherty

Daily Telegraph
May 6, 2025 - 5:00PM
https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/n...-august-under-wage-despite/news-story/7fbee46c75bedce3f4d29e7e3e63ba58#comments

The rail union wants staff cabins on driverless Metro trains. Picture: Justin Lloyd


The rail union is demanding Transport for NSW install drivers’ cabins on driverless Metro trains.
The Daily Telegraph can reveal Metro operator MTS is “considering” the Rail Tram and Bus Union’s call for secure staff cabins in Metro trains, which was made in negotiations for a new pay deal.
The NSW government is resisting the costly move but the dispute could devolve into disruptive strike action from August if not resolved by then.
Installing driver cabins on the driverless Metro would cause mass disruption to the network by forcing the trains to be re-approved by the national safety regulator.
The RTBU conceded retrofitting cabins into the rolling stock would be a “very large piece of work” which would “involve negotiating with Transport for NSW, Sydney Metro and the (national safety) regulator … as it involves altering approved infrastructure”.



RTBU members working on the Metro are demanding a 24 per cent pay rise over three years, 10 paid sick days a year, and “staff seating” at Metro stations as part of bargaining on their new enterprise agreement.

Deputy Liberal leader Natalie Ward said the prospect of installing cabins on the driverless Metro was “pathetic”.

“The RTBU leadership have already torpedoed the train network,” she said.

Customer Journey Co-ordinators were put on Metro trains despite the service operating remotely. Picture: Justin Lloyd

“They need to keep their hands off the Metro.

“The government should rule out yet another union stitch-up that will cost taxpayers millions of dollars and disrupt commuter services.

“We already have a driver on the driverless Metro, retro-fitting cabins onto these state-of-the-art trains is pathetic and an example of why Sydney is losing momentum under the government.”

In a statement, an RTBU spokeswoman said staff on the trains needed secure cabins for their own safety.

The government is resisting calls for new staff cabins. Picture: Justin Lloyd.

“With anti-social behaviour and assaults increasing across the rail network, workers need a safe space aboard the train to ensure both their safety and the safety of passengers,” she said.

The spokeswoman rejected the characterisation of the cabins as “drivers’ cabins”.

Transport Minister John Graham said the government “will not be supporting these changes”.

NSW Premier Chris Minns and former transport minister Jo Haylen joined former premiers Mike Baird and Dominic Perrottet to mark the opening of the new Metro line through the city. Picture: NewsWire / Simon Bullard.

The Metro operator is, however, required to consider the changes as part of wage bargaining.

In 2022, the same union forced the then-Coalition government to spend hundreds of millions of dollars modifying the state-of-the-art intercity fleet, including making changes to cameras, screens and emergency doors.

The claims are the latest demands from the union, which threw Sydney’s heavy rail system into chaos last year over demands for a 32 per cent pay rise.

Amid the industrial chaos, the RTBU was demanding that train drivers be put on every Metro train.

Then transport minister Jo Haylen originally refused the demand but backed down in an attempt to end rolling strike action that was grinding the rail network to a halt.

Ms Haylen gave into the demands, with TfNSW staff now working on Metro trains as Customer Journey Co-ordinators.

The bolded bit at the end is just hopeless.
It is us taxpayers paying for this sort of shite, when the metro system was working fine under the previous govt. And still is.
The Union needs to just stfu and just do their job and run ST's properly.

 

[Twizzle]

24% pay rise

f**k off, they cant possibly justify it other to say they are greedy merkins

 

[Gronk]

Smug Stadium ?

 

[Gronk]

About f**king time.

The Balmain Leagues site has been in limbo for 15 years. It’s about to get 227 new homes

The prominent site, which has been languishing since 2010, will be transformed, but some residents think it’s “as workable in Rozelle as a snowflake is in hell”.

www.smh.com.au

 

[Suitman]

Wow. There you go. Sydney Trains goes into meltdown this afternoon.

https://x.com/A_Anand82/status/1924741061853004006/photo/1

https://x.com/LukeHeckendorf/status/1924741240408748444/photo/1

Everyone heading to the metro instead which is still running seamlessly.

 

[Twizzle]

Wow. There you go. Sydney Trains goes into meltdown this afternoon.

and yet they want an extra 25% ?

 

[Suitman]

and yet they want an extra 25% ?

They want more than that.

 

[MarkInTheStands]

I don’t know if you can blame the RBTU for a pantograph, ripping down and overhead powerline maybe the ETU

 

[Suitman]

I don’t know if you can blame the RBTU for a pantograph, ripping down and overhead powerline maybe the ETU

It's not that.
It's the fact that the whole system falls apart.

And who blamed the RTBU?

 

[MarkInTheStands]

and yet they want an extra 25% ?

They want more than that.

And who blamed the RTBU?

So that's not blaming the RTBU or ETU ?

 

[Suitman]

So that's not blaming the RTBU or ETU ?

Not for this particular issue, no.

 

[MarkInTheStands]

From my knowledge of the network ((I ride the rails 3 times a week) the problem here was that the train bought down the overhead lines at the Switch after Homebush.

Those have have been on regular services will notice how the trains slow coming into Homebush (but don't stop there) and then get switched across 3 lines to get into the intercity / harbour bridge lines. That is opposed to intercity services that terminate at Central the just stay on the same track.

My guess is the driver here went to fast over the switches and caught a connecting wire.

That would mean the bulk of the lines would be down because this train was over that one specific switch.

I have thought about how a tunnel or something to negate those points would work. Somewhere between Flemington and Homebush, but there are bridges to deal with and the rest it would be a massive project.

 

[Suitman]

From my knowledge of the network ((I ride the rails 3 times a week) the problem here was that the train bought down the overhead lines at the Switch after Homebush.

Those have have been on regular services will notice how the trains slow coming into Homebush (but don't stop there) and then get switched across 3 lines to get into the intercity / harbour bridge lines. That is opposed to intercity services that terminate at Central the just stay on the same track.

My guess is the driver here went to fast over the switches and caught a connecting wire.

That would mean the bulk of the lines would be down because this train was over that one specific switch.

I have thought about how a tunnel or something to negate those points would work. Somewhere between Flemington and Homebush, but there are bridges to deal with and the rest it would be a massive project.

I completely agree that the system needs to be "untangled".

 

[Gronk]

I don’t know if you can blame the RBTU for a pantograph, ripping down and overhead powerline maybe the ETU

New word for me. Thank you MITS.

 

[the phantom menace]

Transport NSW have been given large amounts of money to do exactly that - untangle the system, make it more efficient during outages etc - following the previous review of the system in 2023(?).

Seems Transport NSW couldn't organise a root in brothel, and there simply needs to be change among the transport "experts" at the top... unless they are like Origin or NRL coaches, and have no influence on or accountability for the players under their command?

 

[MarkInTheStands]

New word for me. Thank you MITS.

View attachment 102355

Notice the cross wires, as well and the switch tracks and the panto being ripped off.

 

[the phantom menace]

Not for this particular issue, no.

Lol

 

[Suitman]

Opinion

Sydney’s rusty rail network poses political pitfalls for Premier

The Premier may be losing sleep over Sydney’s repeated and inevitable rail failures, but commuters are losing their time, patience, and tempers.

James O'DohertyState Political Editor

Daily Telegraph
May 23, 2025 - 11:46AM
https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/n...tical-pitfalls-for-premier/news-story/5e8b6c66ecc7438e25c60614918d6c7e#comments
Sydney’s rail network is so fragile, so flimsy and so frail that Premier Chris Minns is literally losing sleep over it.
“I stay up nights worrying about this,” Minns declared on Wednesday, after a single overhead wire fault sent a city of more than five million people into total meltdown.
Those sleepless nights are entirely justified. Failures of the mass transport networks do not just leave countless commuters in the lurch; they can also lose governments elections.
Nothing else within the state government’s power has the terrible capacity to screw up everybody’s day, every day, twice a day.
Transport boffins are still yet to work out the exact cause of Tuesday’s catastrophe, which means they cannot promise that it will not happen again – whether that’s tomorrow, next week, or next month.

Commuters were left stranded for more than 24 hours due to Tuesday’s disaster. Picture: Thomas Lisson

The network breakdowns would be bad enough on their own, but they are made worse by the fact that train performance is in the pits, even on a good day.
The government has not met its on-time running targets, where 92 per cent of services arrive within five minutes of their scheduled arrival time, since January last year.
For the majority of this year, one in five trains has run late. And we haven’t had a consistently reliable service since the end of 2021.

Passengers queued for hundreds of metres for buses at Lidcombe on Wednesday. Picture: Justin Lloyd.

Minns announced he would hold a “short and sharp” review into the rail network following this week’s debacle.
That is not going to cut it, particularly when the government is still yet to implement findings from the last review into exactly the same thing.
That review, we revealed this week, cost almost $700,000 in contractors alone.

All lines but the T4 were impacted in the latest rail meltdown.



It took crews 12 hours to clear the damage. Picture Thomas Lisson

It identified maintenance backlogs which are yet to be fixed (delayed, in part, by industrial action) and failings in incident management.
Any review must look into how the network can be untangled.
There was a reason that commuters on the T4 Eastern Suburbs and Illawarra line were spared the brunt of the rail chaos this week; that line runs independently to the rest of the network.
A respected former transport boss also thinks that the government should carve up the bureaucracy and begin again.

Power was only turned back on after 7am on Wednesday. Picture Thomas Lisson

Former transport tsar John Lee argues that amalgamating the rail operations into Transport for NSW has diluted the capacity of Sydney Trains to keep things running.
He thinks the government should go back to the future with a new railway “authority,” similar to the State Transit Authority he once ran for the bus network.
“At the turn of the century the railways in Victoria, NSW and Queensland were literally run by authorities,” Lee says.
Those authorities could exert “command and control of operations”, he says, who could actually get things done.

Trains were running at limited capacity all of Wednesday. Picture Thomas Lisson

“There’s been a devolution of that authority over time, and what it has done is reduce the focus.”
In a perfect world, we would do away with heavy rail for good for suburban commutes, by building more Metro lines.
This week, it was the Metro that came to the rescue. The only problems people faced getting onto services in the city was that it was too popular, and the escalators to the platforms were going the wrong way.



Chris Minns says he is losing sleep over the state of the rail network. Picture: NewsWire / Nikki Short

While trains were sitting idle, Metro services were actually increased to handle the extra load.
If Opposition Leader Mark Speakman was smart, he would use the repeated rail meltdowns to announce he would go all in on Metro lines.
Unshackled by Labor’s aversion to privatisation, Speakman could promise to court private investment to fund the infrastructure of the 21st century.
If the Sydney City Metro had been opened before the last state election, then-premier Dominic Perrottet would have used the immense popularity of the network to push ahead on other lines that have since been delayed, pushed back, or shelved.



Voters will punish Labor at the polls if rail chaos continues. Picture: NewsWire / Nikki Short

Instead, construction of new Metro rail links to Sydney’s west will not start until 2040, if they are ever built at all.
Labor made the right call in going ahead with Metro West, but there are other crucial links – particularly to the Western Sydney airport – that he has put on the back burner.
For Minns, offering a paltry fare-free day on Monday will do nothing to assuage commuters’ anger, particularly when the entire city ground to a halt for more than 24 hours.
Minns described the failure as a “big, red, loud warning,” acknowledging that commuters have the government on a “very short leash”. That leash is getting shorter.
The Premier needs to spend those sleepless nights working out how he is going to ensure Sydney has a rail network that is actually up to the job.

 

[bazza]

I completely agree that the system needs to be "untangled".

think this was a thing a decade or so ago - the "clearways" project/s
seems that was put aside and investment has gone into creating new metro lines rather than upgrades to the Sydney trains network