What about the "events and incidents" involved in using Sydney's City Rail system?! Late trains, cancelled trains, missed trains, trains replaced by buses, rude staff, confusing or non-existent annnouncements, nasty fellow commuters reeking of B.O and/or conducting loud and innane mobile phone conversations....the list goes on!!...surely this can't be any better for one's psychological and mental health!

The primary way for governments to encourage people to leave their cars at home is to provide a reliable, cost effective public transport system as a viable alternative. I don't know about elsewhere in Australia but that is certainly not the case in Sydney and untill it happends you can use whatever arguments or platitudes you like to extol the virtues of public transport but they will fall on the deaf ears of frustrated commuters

Before people can be brought back to public transport it must be made to pay. This would best be done by installing a poker machine in each second carriage. If that doesn't work you could operate a brothel in the ones in between.

I’ll tell you what’s “capable of producing powerful feelings”. PARENTS, Hang on to your kids on the platform these hols.

The other night at an uncrowded Central station the train door closed suddenly. I was in the train and my young son was not. Yes it happens – it happened in an instance. He tried to get the platform guard to have the train doors opened while I bashed on the doors from the inside. Several seconds passed then unbelievably the train began to move. I can tell you that the memory of the anguish on my son’s face as he ran along the platform with me captive in the train is the stuff nightmares are made of.

When I returned on another train and found my son waiting on his own I approached the guard who watched all of this take place - and admitted so. He lectured me that my son and I should be together and he claimed that the train cannot be stopped once it moves, regardless of a child in distress!

I have been using the public transport system precisely for the reasons highlighted in this article. My letter of complaint should by now be in the hands of the guard’s employer. I will in future use the car.

Your story is ridiculous hutlen, unfortunately if the moron that let that train go is fired there are probably 10 more CityRail morons out there to replace him! good on your son for being sensible and waiting where you'd left him or god knows what would have happened with the wierdos that hang around Central station at night! (is he really young?)

As a daily train commuter (reluctantly but with no option as I don't drive) nothing suprises me anymore when it comes to CityRail staff, Several times I have seen them swear at and abuse people in the foulest terms, just for having the audacity to ask what the delay was or when the next train would (finally)arrive. They blank out the indicators at the stations, fail to make announcements and expect paying customers to sit at train stations and wait...and wait...untill a train damn well feels like coming. They sit in ticket booths and chat to each other while ticket queues streach round the corner and people miss their trains waiting in line. As I leave Central station in the morning I see about 15 of them lounging round at the exit smoking and drinking cups of coffee (and I see them again on my way back)...They never seem to be doing anything useful to earn their taxpayer dollars. We've all heard of the coordinated "sickie days" train drivers pull.

And yet the rail unions keep telling us it's the government and the infrastructure rather than rail employees that are to blame for the state of CityRail...I don't know, but I also work in customer service and if I did my job like they do theirs I'd be out on my ass! Maybe if these deadbeats got fired and their closed shop was dismantled CityRail's problems would be magically solved

Many drivers relish the period of solitude, free from family and work pressures, offered by the journey to work in their own car. They are free to make their own decisions, solve their own problems, and enjoy the pleasures of car control. Barns misses the point: demographic shift will soon see a quarter of the population aged 65 and over. Global warming, the tipping point in oil production and the measures needed to contain atmospheric pollution will constrain access to oil based have unforeseeable effects on passenger transport. Expect hybrid and fuel cell technology in mainline buses; Dial-A-Ride services to counter social isolation and exclusion; more home based workers; more community based solutions. Access to personal transport is a public health issue. Older people isolated from their community risk the effects of social, physical and mental inactivity: all the chronic conditions - diabetes, arthritis, cardio-vascular disease and depression, obesity, fractures from falling - all the main vectors of health costs. But who cares?

Just the other day I had cause to drive from Lismore to Brisbane to deliver a friend to the airport. The amount of trafiic clogging the roads from the Gold Coast to Brisbane and reverse was astounding. The increase in cars and trucks on the Freeway in the ten years since I lived in the Sunshine State was unbelievable. The polution was noticable by sight, taste, and smell.
Public transport, primarily train travel will reduce this over- uasage of not only roads, but fuel costs and traffic accidents, (slight and fatal,) which costs the tax payers more and more each year.
Noticably most every car I saw on the road carried 1 person.
Oil Reserve is an oxy-moron.
Sooner or later the government must make private transport more unpalatable for people.
I know if there was safe, reliable and inexpensive rail travel from Lismore to Brisbane, I would use it at least once a month.
But there isn't, so I'll stay off the roads and enjoy the fresh air of the Northern rivers.