Swan Hill avoids V/Line crisis

EVEN though the Swan Hill V/Line service has largely avoided the state’s regional rail crisis, it reported a significant reduction in punctuality last month.

Last week, V/Line released its performance data for January, the same month the passenger rail service provider suffered mass cancellations of and delays to regional services.

Along with problems with level crossings, V/Line identified higher-than-normal wheel wear on some VLocity carriages required additional maintenance, meaning fewer carriages were available to operate the timetable and, in some cases, train services needed to be replaced with coaches.

The Swan Hill and Echuca lines (which were counted together in the data) were shown to have missed out on the cancellations, having been 99 per cent reliable in January – the same rate as in December.

However, punctuality fell from 80.7 per cent in December to 71.9 per cent in January.

The lines hadn’t dropped below 90 per cent punctuality in the 16 months prior to December – the furthest publicly-available performance figures date back to.

For more on this story, grab a copy of Wednesday’s Guardian (February 17).