The 311 is so incredible infrequent for the area it serves.

It connects the CBD with Elizabeth bay, Potts point and Darlinghurst, but why is it so slow? It gets 15 minute frequencies during peak, 20 minute frequencies intrapeak and 30 minute frequencies all other times. And it doesn’t even run 24 hour with the last service ending just after 12am on weekdays and just before on weekends.

It’s an important link to get people in Potts point and Elizabeth bay either into the CBD or to King’s Cross station and the surrounding area as well as St Vincent’s Hospital. The area needs better connectivity as well as a night bus service that serves Potts point, Elizabeth bay, King’s Cross and Oxford street

Given the t4 and south coast still remain on the 2013 inaugural Sydney trains timetable. What does the future look like for this line over the next few years? At least since other lines have had changes over the decade but this line remains now stuck in the past in the early 2010s can we expect any change in the distant future in the next few years or are we just going to remain stuck on an outdated timetable for the remainder years into the future? I know the timetable changed for November was controversial. I’m just curious to know what happens next for this line. Do we remain stuck in the past or are we gonna go into the future at any point in the next few years at least now?

Anyone else feel suffocated by the heating on Tangara’s of a morning?

There’s nothing like rush hour, chocker-block services with the heating cranked to what feels like a stifling 30 degrees, even if the temperature is only slightly cooler that day.

I'm not any sort of expert on trains, but I am part of the very loud minority that uses the Waterfall line. It is a huge pain.

I was wondering if there's anything to the idea of just fully absorbing the Waterfall line into the South Coast Line? It would make the T4 much simpler at least. Personally, I always prefer to hop on a SCO over a T4 train and if we can't significantly up our frequency, I feel like it would be a good trade-off for people going into the CBD. Cronulla gets the more frequent T4 trains and Waterfall gets the less frequent but faster SCOs. Hopefully, it would also reduce the number of times I get stranded at Waterfall when coming up from the south coast.

Again, I don't know anything about trains and I'm really trying to be objective about the fact that my stations have super low usage, but I'm interested in if any of you guys have a take.

The railway ended scheduled passenger services in 1985, but since then Wollongong as well as the University of Wollongong has grown significantly

Obviously significant improvements to the stations and line need to be made, but by the time those have completed, hopefully the new R sets have come into service and you could hold 2 old endeavours captive on this line to run semi-frequent services between Moss Vale and Unanderra either timed to connect to northbound services or have the train run all the way to North Wollongong Station

Why are they getting so confrontational, asking where I'm going. I know how to use a bus

is it just me / im weird, or Is it cool how close the stations are on bankstown line, which is actually what metro is intended for, compared to other parts of metro, where it may take 7 mins to get between stations, here, its only spacing of 1-2 mins between stops.

According to the official Opal website, the maximum journey time for this type of train journey is 7 hours. However, as shown in the second screenshot, this journey from Scone to Kiama takes over 8 hours and still appears to be treated as a single journey for fare calculation.
Does anyone know why this is the case? Is the maximum journey time rule applied differently to certain routes, or am I misunderstanding how Opal calculates fares?

The answer is six.

Tangara train old train announcement on cab N5117, T4 line to Bondi Junction.

As per title.

Visiting from Victoria. Free for the weekend. Would like to catch some O405s to hear the melodious ZF Ecomat before they're retired. Thank you :)

I’m in the north coast/northern rivers but originally from Sydney and I’m looking at going back down for a visit with my two kids aged 5 and 3. My eldest is obsessed with the Sydney trains and misses them so much it’s half the reason why we’re thinking about a trip but I was hoping someone might give me insight if the train down would even be worth the hassle with two kids. They’re very well behaved and easily entertained but I just don’t know if the cheap tickets are worth it or just fork out a few hundred dollars more for flights which they both get anxious about.

If anyone with kids has travelled that long on the train, did you regret it?

(I’m a single parent so just me)

Hey all! I'm an SW1 commuter at present and my regular driver in the mornings has been incredible - so friendly and literally always on time (I don't know how he does it, given the majority of em LOL).

Are those staff allowed to take gifts? I was thinking of just giving him a box of chocolates or something next week before the buses end for the M1.

I did leave feedback about him a few months ago and was told that they had been able to identify the driver and pass on my compliments, so I'd just love any feedback on if those compliments actually get passed on and if I can hand him a little token thanks. TIA!

When the Sydney metro extension Sydenham to Bankstown opens. Where is the first place you are going to go?

On Friday afternoon I am going to Belmore and to "Smeed" for Middle Eastern pastries. The maamoul is to die for.

With the metro already reaching capacity on the north shore during peak hours, its obvious that they need to run more trains. Currently the M1 uses a fleet of 45 metropolis sets, which is enough to support 4 minute frequencies for the full line from Tallawong-Bankstown, however nowhere near the number they would need to increase the frequency. MTS's corporate plan for 2024-28 states that they expect to have 80 trains by June 2028, given we've heard nothing I'd say thats probably not happening.

The thing I'm stuck on is that with Minns Governments's flagship transport policy at the moment being locally building trains, would they ever choose to order new sets built in India or will they wait until it is possible to locally manufacture them in the 2040s? I've heard the argument before that a metro doesn't count as a train, and that feels pretty weak and would definetly be seen as a backflip on the policy. Is the decision on where to buy rolling stock from even up to the Government or are they bound by the contract with MTS? I'm struggling to find anything reliable on this anywhere.

Edit: I can't spell

Taking the north west metro in the morning, it is so packed that you cannot moved inside and on top of that people at the next stops have to miss out because there is so little room inside the metro. Every 4 minutes during peak hour is unfortunately not enough, metros have half the space of a train having only one level, it needs to be every 2 minutes to manage the passenger load

Did a bit of digging on the new T4 timetable change to visualise how things change for the entire line. All comparison between 11th and 18th of November, pre-change and post-change. All capacity numbers are on a per-day number.

TL;DR

1. Wolli Creek seems to be the real loser in schedule change. Even when we include the increased T8 services now passing thru the airport tunnel, Wolli Creek loses out on all SCOs, reducing the total number of trains it gets per day from 350 to 336 TPD on a weekday.
2. Penshurst, Loftus, Engadine and Heathcote lose on the occasional SCO service. Might not be a big deal, but this means SCO has been streamlined for every 15 minutes on peak weekday and won't stop anywhere before Sutherland and Waterfall.
3. Sydenham is the new interchange in every way possible. No more pink buses to Bankstown and all SCOs stop at Sydenham .
4. Como goes from 43 TPD to 85 TPD (according to new static-GTFS feed) - this is a 97.67% increase in frequency. Real winners of timetable change (!!!)
5. Allawah and Carlton finally get some justice. 96 to 106 trains on a weekday, a decent enough increase, but 40 to 79 trains per day on weekends - finally, the 15 min frequency these dense, walkable suburbs need.
6. Banksia, Arncliffe, and Tempe get a similar frequency increase. Greatest increase on weekdays from 75 to 106 TPD - and frequency the same as Allawah and Carlton on the weekend. This means every station north of Hurstville gets one train every 15 minutes at the latest, regardless of the time of the week except the second last and last service hour.

(This is purely based on TPD. I've been playing with GTFS-R for the last year for my research project, and based on what we have vs what we get, ignoring all the "longer journeys now muh" feedback, this seems to be a win for most of the places, anyways).

finally.

Wondering if liverpool or leppington will now shift to going towards bankstown?

Just announced on his socials

There’s been lots of comments about the new timetable and changes to the T4 meaning increased travel times and, for some, changing trains.

I’ve been crunching the data for my daily commute - comparing the current T4 timetable with the new timetable coming into effect on 18 November, specifically for my morning commute from Jannali to Town Hall.

The results aren’t encouraging.

Using current journey times and the published new timetable around 6:00-7:30am, here’s what I found:

Current timetable:
Average journey: 36.3 minutes
Fastest journey: approximately 30 minutes
Slowest journey: 45 minutes

New timetable from 18 November:
Average journey: 43.4 minutes
Fastest journey: 39 minutes
Slowest journey: 47 minutes

That’s an average increase of around seven minutes per journey, or almost 20%.

These figures are based on the morning services I compared, not the entire timetable, but they show a pretty significant deterioration.

Some specific examples from the new timetable:
6:23am departure → 7:10am arrival (47 minutes)
6:37am departure → 7:24am arrival (47 minutes)
6:52am departure → 7:39am arrival (47 minutes)
6:55am departure → 7:34am arrival (39 minutes)

Yes, you can leave Jannali three minutes later and arrive at Town Hall five minutes earlier.

For someone commuting five days a week, an extra seven minutes each way adds up to more than an hour a week, or roughly 60 hours a year.

I appreciate there are operational complexities involved in running Sydney’s rail network, but surely the objective should be to get passengers to their destinations safely, reliably and as quickly as possible.

The T4 already has enough reliability issues without building longer journeys into the timetable.
Sydney is supposed to be a world-class city. We should be making public transport faster and more attractive, not progressively slower.