Sydney’s new Railway Operations Centre (artist’s impression) Image: Sydney Trains
When Sydney Trains chief executive officer Howard Collins talked about boosting customer service and implementing new innovations at AusRAIL Plus 2015 in November last year, this was what he meant.
One of the biggest complaints that often falls on railway operator ears is train delays, so the New South Wales government has invested $276 million in building a new Sydney Trains Rail Operations Centre at Green Square, a precinct that has gone under constant new development through the state government and the City of Sydney.
The new Centre has been announced by NSW Minister for Transport and Infrastructure Andrew Constance, who revealed that it will be aimed at reducing train delays and will provide faster information to customers.
The goal of the Centre is to ensure all facets of the train network are controlled from a single location, with new technology to manage train movements and customer safety, whereas right now there are multiple monitoring centres using a mix of old and new technology at depots including Redfern and Flemington among others.
Mr Constance said this new centre will ultimately improve train reliability for customers and when there are delays, information will be communicated much more quickly.
“This is a massive commitment to a transformational project that will help ensure Sydney Trains can continue to improve the service it provides to customers,” Mr Constance said.
For Sydney Trains, which used to run under the name RailCorp prior to the O’Farrell government’s ambitious rebranding of the operator, using new technology to finally put an end to the operator’s previously poor reputation for endless delays and cancellations is a major development in its long history as a transport institution.
Mr Collins said the organisation’s performance has been held back in recent years by outdated technology and having to respond manually to incidents.
“At the moment we manage the trains and tracks, respond to incidents, communicate with customers and monitor their safety from different locations and in different ways,” Mr Collins said.
“One example is that during an incident, there are multiple phone calls made between the person reporting the incident, the person who controls the trains, another party in charge of fixing the fault and the response team in the field”
He said the new centre will mean each of these parties are informed the moment the issue is reported and because they will all be in the same location, receiving more information, they can ensure the best response to get our customers moving again.
The Sydney Trains network control facility is set to open in 2018.
