Transport Minister Rita Saffioti has defended the performance of Perth’s public transport network, after a notable statistical dip in the reliability of trains on Transperth lines this year.
Transport Minister Rita Saffioti has defended the performance of Perth’s public transport network, after a notable statistical dip in the reliability of trains on Transperth lines this year.
State government statistics published in May revealed April was the worst month on record for train performance across the Transperth network since published records started in 2012.
Trains which arrive more than four minutes before or after their scheduled time are considered to sit outside the reliability window, according to last year’s Public Transport Authority annual report.
Train service reliability came in at 88.25 per cent in April – indicating more than 11 per cent of all trains were outside the four-minute window – and climbed back to 90.9 per cent in the most recent May numbers.
Business News understands that a delay to a single train on a line can have a cascading effect for those following, under the current system of reliability measurement.
The PTA has historically targeted a 95 per cent reliability rate for the Transperth train network and averaged 94.31 per cent in 2023-24.
But this year’s numbers have been particularly notable. Monthly reliability has only come in below 90 per cent three times since 2012.
Two of the three were reported in the first five months of this year, with the third reported in February 2024.
Transport Minister and Treasurer Rita Saffioti told Business News yesterday that the performance of the train network remained impressive, given the scale of investment in the network in recent years.
“We’re making major modifications to basically every rail line, so there is a lot of activity across the network this year,” she said.
“We’ve brought on Ellenbrook, Thornlie, Cockburn, elevated rail, we’re bedding in some of our other infrastructure. We’re changing signaling – there is a lot of disruption.”
The state’s investment in the train network since Labor took office in 2017 has been significant and well publicised, with the enlarged Metronet project coming with an estimated price tag of almost $14 billion.
Alstom is manufacturing railcars at the Metronet Bellevue facility, with the first of 246 on order from the state coming online in 2024.
Ms Saffioti said the government was proud to have overseen the evolution of the state’s train network.
“I’m pretty pleased with the fact we have been able to roll out the biggest transformation of the public transport network in the state’s history and still have a very, very good system running,” she said.
The train network’s expanded reach off the back of Metronet means more services are running in more directions than ever before.
More than 5.5 million commuters caught Transperth trains in March according to PTA figures, shy of the monthly passenger record of 6.1 million train passengers reported in May 2013, but with significant works ongoing along major lines.
The PTA did provide comment in time for publication.
