Rail review LIVE: NSW Government releases scathing report into Sydney trains

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What you need to know

By Jessica McSweeney and Matt O'Sullivan

This morning the NSW government released an independent review into an incident in May which threw Sydney’s rail network into chaos.

The results were scathing, finding failures both in the immediate response to the incident and in the days that followed.

Here’s what you need to know:

On May 20, an overhead wire broke and fell onto a train in Homebush. The incident sent the network into meltdown for two days.
The review found that the issue with the wiring was detected during a trial of technology in 2020, but wasn’t followed up. Visual inspections over the last four years, made by staff using binoculars, did not detect the issue.
The review found multiple levels of failure in Sydney Trains’ response, including not communicating effectively with passengers and not getting passengers off the impacted train quickly enough.
The report found failures in decision-making at the Rail Operations Centre, the nerve centre of Sydney’s rail network, which did not have a clear chain of command.
Sydney Trains chief executive Matt Longland said staffing changes have already been made.
The government will inject an extra $458 million into the network over four years for upgrading the network including rail track signals and overhead wiring.

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11.13am

‘We did not take care of passengers’

By Michael Ruffles

Sydney Trains chief executive Matt Longland puts it bluntly: “We did not take care of passengers”.

The report spells out how passengers were failed on May 20 and 21.

The “incident train” came to a standstill about 50 metres short of Homebush station at 2.56pm but passengers were not removed until three hours later.

The incident train which triggered two days of chaos.

Four other trains were left stranded between stations: two within 300 metres of Leppington station, one 720m short of Flemington, and a fourth with one carriage on platform seven of Strathfield station.

Passengers were taken off the Strathfield train within minutes, apart from one passenger with a mobility scooter who left the train almost two hours later. The other three trains arrived at the next station and passengers disembarked within an hour.

For the “incident train”, passengers were on board for three hours and were left for long stretches without communication.

One passenger described how about 300 people were stuck with no water, no power and no air-conditioning. For the final 45 minutes, there was no communication and many people had lost battery power in their mobiles and needed the toilet.

“In the Panel’s view, many aspects of [the passenger]’s experience are simply unacceptable,” the report said.

“Detraining took far too long, with the negative effects of this experience compounded by the absence of meaningful customer care – including more assistance in completing their journeys once passengers disembarked. We are also of the view that, with their consent, customer details should have been taken to allow subsequent follow-up.”

11.00am

Rail Operations Centre did not have clear chain of command

By Jessica McSweeney

The nerve centre of Sydney’s train network, the Rail Operations Centre (ROC), did not have a clear chain of command, Sydney Trains chief executive Matt Longland says.

Longland said the ROC “needs to look at the chain of command, the decisions that are being made, the way that those decisions flow through to teams, both in the ROC but also at an incident location, to ensure that we can recover from incidents in a much more responsive and co-ordinated way”.

“A network the size of ours and the complexity of Sydney Trains, we need an insurance management process, 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” he said.

There have already been leadership changes, Longland said. The report found there were too many people on the floor of the ROC, and the decision-making process needed to be streamlined.

10.52am

Transport secretary apologises to passengers

By Jessica McSweeney

Transport for NSW secretary Josh Murray has apologised to commuters for the failures identified in the report, admitting that passengers were not put first.

Murray said that despite the work of frontline crews, “a number of contradictory and compounding decisions were made that exacerbated the situation”

“High voltage wires falling on the roof of a train during the peak will always be a serious and significant safety incident, requiring the utmost safety controls and culture from Sydney Trains,” he said.

“But this does not account for the way recovery and repair time blew out at almost every juncture.”

10.33am

Watch: Transport minister’s press conference

Minister for Transport John Graham, Transport for NSW secretary Josh Murray, Sydney Trains CEO Matt Longland and report author Kerry Schott AO spoke to media at 10:30.

Watch the press conference below.

10.25am

Homebush incident triggered scathing review

By Jessica McSweeney

The independent review was triggered by an incident at Homebush, when just before 3pm on May 20 an overhead wire that provides power to the train broke and fell onto the roof.

What followed were two days of chaos.

The review found that four years of visual inspections failed to detect that the wire was thin and “beyond breaking limits”. On top of those failings, the review found that a trial of technology in 2020 did pick up the issue, but no one followed it up for repairs.

The review also found the recovery time of two days was “far too long” and there was a “lack of management capability” to deal with serious incidents on the network.

There was a disturbing absence of effective communications, especially for the passengers stuck on the affected train, and passengers trying to get a train home. The report found “no defensible reason” why it took crews three hours to get last of the 300 passengers off the affected train.

10.00am

Funding injection for poor child of Sydney’s rail system

By Matt O'Sullivan

The Minns government will inject an extra $458 million into the heavy rail network over four years, in the wake of today’s scathing report.

The heavy rail network, which carries the vast bulk of Sydney’s train passengers, is often regarded as the poor child of the system when compared to the tens of billions being pumped into building new metro rail lines.

The government says the extra $423 million will go towards upgrading rail tracks signals, overhead wiring and drainage in flood-prone areas.

Of that, just over $41 million will be spent this financial year. A dedicated $35 million reliability program is also being spent this financial year to fast-track repairs in high-priority areas, covering overhead wiring, track, signalling and power systems.

As part of a maintenance overhaul, Sydney Trains will declare “maintenance critical zones”, starting with the Homebush-Strathfield corridor where multiple lines converge.

The rail operator will move from time-based to risk-based maintenance, targeting areas with the greatest impact on network reliability. Two new rapid incident response teams will be set up - one based at Redfern by late this year, and Homebush by early next.

9.59am

Report a ‘sobering read’

By Jessica McSweeney

The state government will accept all 12 recommendations in the review, with Transport Minister John Graham admitting the rail network isn’t up to scratch.

Graham said the review made for “tough reading”.

“Incidents are inevitable from time to time on a rail network the size and age of Sydney’s, but the missteps and mishandling of the response ensured two days of chaos on our city’s public transport system when a well-managed response could – and should – have limited disruption to one day,” he said.

“A well-managed rail maintenance program could – and should – have fixed this fault after it was detected and prevented the disruption affecting so many.”

We’ll hear more from Graham in the next half hour.

9.53am

Review finds inadequate response to train line failures

By Matt O'Sullivan

Hello and welcome to our live coverage of the release of a scathing report into Sydney’s rail network.

Transport Minister John Graham will join transport executives at 10.30am for a press conference. First, here are the key findings of the Independent Rail Review, which was led by transport and infrastructure expert Kerry Schott into Sydney’s rail network following a major incident at Homebush on May 20:

The overhead wire that failed had been identified as a risk in 2020 but was never entered into Sydney Trains’ defect management system and was not repaired.
The fault caused citywide disruption, rippling across multiple lines.
Recovery of services was far too slow, including a three-hour operation to get passengers off the stranded train at Homebush.
Communication with passengers and within the Rail Operations Centre was inadequate, contributing to confusion and delay.