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The number of people catching intercity trains from Wollongong, the Central Coast, and Blue Mountains to Sydney is on the decline, failing to bounce back after COVID.
Key points:
- Patronage on regional rail lines running to Sydney is still down up to 50 per cent on pre-COVID levels
- While partly due to flexible work from home arrangements, commuters are unhappy with poor reliability
- RDA Illawarra CEO Debra Murphy says there was a small uplift post-lockdowns but the trend has "basically stuck"
Transport for NSW monthly train patronage figures show that intercity rail travel into Sydney from Wollongong on the South Coast line has dropped on average of about 50 per cent since 2019.
There was a similar decline on the Central Coast, Blue Mountains, and Southern Highlands lines.
Deb Murphy from Regional Development Australia Illawarra said an increase in people working from home accounts for much, but not all, of the drop in patronage.
"When you combine the significant downward trend in commuting on rail with the downward trend of nearly 30 per cent on the road, our hypothesis is that hybrid working will remain," she said.
"It's basically stuck with our community.
"We kept thinking that the drop off was going to go back up again. There was a bit of an incline [after] every lockdown.
"But it never really reverted and I suppose that's what we're seeing now, that rail travel has remained at pretty much 50 per cent behind what it was pre-COVID."
Chris Murray lives in Shell Cove, south of Wollongong, and commutes one to two days per week to North Sydney by train as he is able to work from home the other days.
Mr Murray said he preferred to drive to southern Sydney to catch the train because of the unreliability of Illawarra trains.
"I feel like a lot of other people, particularly around my area, around Shellharbour and down the South Coast, unfortunately have to drive half the way there then catch the train," he said.
"I only commute one to two days per week but I feel with the lack of trains, and issues with trains recently, I have to either have to drive to Waterfall or Sutherland and then get the train from there just for reliability purposes," he said.
Trains unreliable
Nichol Uckan said a particularly bad experience using the South Coast line and Sydney public transport on March 11 had left her "traumatised" and she was very hesitant to try it again.
She said on that occasion it took her four and a half hours each way to travel from Wollongong to Auburn in western Sydney.
"I have been around the world, in Europe and Turkey on a trip, and I have never experienced the kind of chaos in public transport as I have experienced in Australia," she said.
"From Wollongong, to travel 80 kilometres, how can it take four and a half hours?"
Still waiting for new trains
Tony Horneman, an Illawarra commuter and part of the group Illawarra Rail Fail, said the upside was that with fewer people catching trains overcrowding was not currently such a problem.
"[But] the reliability of the train network hasn't improved," he said.
"I think there is probably a change in the way people work, with working from home options, that is probably influencing the speed at which passenger numbers come back to pre-COVID levels.
"But pre-COVID, when you think back then, the trains were dangerously overcrowded on the South Coast line."
He said he was still waiting for promised new trains to arrive.
"When the full capacity eventually returns there will be dangerous overcrowding [again], and there is no word on this multi- billion-dollar new intercity fleet which is over three years late now," Mr Horneman said.
"It's mothballed on the Central Coast, and there is no word on when they are going to be introduced on the South Coast line.
"We'll wait and see what the new Labor government is going to do."