Spot on, Richard.

There is not a hope in hell that Sydney will improve its congestion if only the NW and SW rail extensions are built. They have to be of course; but the new transport tsar should be told he has not a cent to spend on trams until he raises bus patronage across the metropolis - including the link points with the new and developing rail centres - in a European pattern as Chris Stapleton has been espousing. If trams are included, the budget has flown out the window - why put rails in the road and coal-fired wires in the air when the right bus types will do better!

Yep, there's the trains.

And the power utilities, and the airport problem and the housing problem and the water problem and the...

But then there's the trains.

We all know that the system fails almost every test. And that NSW governments have been tinkering around the edges of the problems for decades, and none has had the guts to actually do anything significant. The latest gimmick - to send the trains away ahead of their scheduled time, and to allow them extra minutes at key stations a long the way - was typically infuriating. The fact that it enabled the system to claim higher "on-time performance", came, as usual, at the expense of the passengers.

It is certainly a difficult problem, and to be fair it isn't all about the unions. The entire system hasn't been allowed to keep pace with the city's demographic changes over the past fifty years, so the problems are now deeply rooted in the infrastructure. Even the type of rolling stock - the famous double-deckers - are entirely inappropriate for today's needs. Lighter, more efficient stock needs far less maintenance both for itself and the tracks it runs on. Track maintenance is a running sore for all weekend travellers... the sorry tale goes on.

We are assuming of course that fixing the trains is one of Mr O'Farrell's "iron clad" promises.

http://www.electionleaflets.org.au/leaflets/864/

All I can find is a bit about "135 new express train services"

Oh well. We can always dream.

Some years ago a friend who worked in State Rail told me that NSW runs more trains in Sydney during peak hour than Victoria runs State-wide all day.

As well as being a logistical nightmare, especially the chaos that results from even a minor breakdown, Sydney seems to have outgrown the number of tracks it has to service its growing population.