9th July 2017
Not Going Right trains - community service public information campaign gains steam
Good Morning,
Days since NGR 701 towed to Wulkuraka is now 505. Five hundred and five days in which the fundamental design problems with the trains have only been given scant regard until recently. It has only been the threats of legal action by disability groups that has forced a tacit acknowledgement that there are problems with DDA compliance and it needs fixing - we now have the ' Fixing the NGR trains ', another monumental blunder along with ' Fixing the trains '.
It will probably be many months still before we see these NGR trains in revenue passenger service. Is anyone concerned about that? We are. This is a shocking abysmal failure by the former Newman Government, followed up with more failure and bumble by the Palaszczuk Government.
Serious questions have to be asked as to why such a botched design was ordered in the first place by the Newman Government. This explains in part why mainstream media in SEQ appear to be reluctant to report on the NGR botch as it hits back at the Newman Government and the gross mismanagement by the LNP and their transport bureaucracy. The ALP have not covered themselves in glory either with their constant attempts at cover-up (surprising) and general frozen at the wheel approach, not only for NGR fail and but rail fail generally.
We have been forced into our community service public information campaign re the NGR (Next Generation Rollingstock a.k.a. Not Going Right) trains because Queensland Citizens deserve to know the sheer level of incompetence and managed deceit that lies within the corridors of power and fumble bumble bureaucracy and maladministration of this state. They deserve to know that the rail fail shambles, compounded by NGR fail, will certainly impact the 2018 Commonwealth Games as more reductions in service on their lines to pump up the Gold Coast line services.
We are so looking forward to the state election.
Best wishes,
Robert
Robert Dow
Administration
admin@backontrack.org
RAIL Back On Track https://backontrack.org
So... what on earth do we do?
ReplyDeleteWe have an aging rail fleet that is under resourced (too few trains). We have an aging rail network that is constantly failing. We have an incident management system that has unresolved issues of lack of resourcing "out-of-business hours" (but during peak transit hours). We have incident management processes that are consistently ineffective. We have incidents repeatedly happening that all, including the minister, agree are unacceptable. We have increasing number of "police incidents" occurring, with no apparent proactive reaction (such as advertising about the impact of suicide on innocent drivers and passengers let alone public support for at-risk people). We have have no mention or planning for taking these considerations into account for commonwealth games. We have infrastructure going in that either is against prior recommendations and community consultation (G-Link phase 2), against requirement (NGR, rail lines/signaling issues).
That's all before we even look at the basics, like timetables that make little sense, bus networks that are controlled by a different entity to all other public transport, and the introduction of novel "metro" vehicles where politicians can't answer a straight question as to what it even is. When asked "is it a bus" they point-blank refused to answer yes or no.
QR can't organise consistent communication and messages within/from their staff.
What do we do?
My take:
1. Get better internal communication (communication is 2 way).
2. Ensure incident management available throughout the network for any time of operation. Incidents at 6pm are still affecting some peak passengers on some lines.
3. Begin "root-cause" analysis to identify what their principle issues are and start creating plans for addressing them.
4. Transparent and consistant external communication.
There is so much more that needs to be done....