Melbourne’s rail service provider and the premier have both apologised to passengers who were trapped in hot carriages for hours after a fault halted services running through the new Metro Tunnel on Tuesday evening.
Thousands of peak hour commuters were disrupted when an overhead power fault at Armadale halted peak-hour trains on the newly re-routed Cranbourne, Pakenham and Sunbury lines just days after full services began running through the new tunnel.
About 600 passengers were stuck on board two trains without air-conditioning for up to to two hours in 30 degree Celsius heat before they could be evacuated from their carriages and walked along the line to their nearest station.
Other services were cancelled during the chaos, and even after the fault was fixed, services were suspended from Caulfield through the Metro Tunnel and out to West Footscray for the rest of Tuesday night.
Metro Trains CEO Raymond O’Flaherty said the shutdown was caused by an overhead wire and pantograph — the apparatus mounted on the roof of a train that connects to the powerline — becoming entangled.
He said he apologised to all Melbourne commuters.
“I know it was incredibly frustrating and took a lot of extra time for them to make their journeys,” Mr O’Flaherty told ABC Radio Melbourne.
“Particularly, I want to apologise to the 600 passengers that were on board the two trains that were stuck on the network for one-and-a-half to two hours while we went through a safe method to de-train them.
“They deserve better.”
Mr O’Flaherty defended the amount of time it took to get the passengers off the sweltering carriages.
“Because of where the incident occurred between two stations on a live track, it was a very complex environment,” he said.
“We had trains running on adjacent lines, we had electrical wires that came down and were on top of the trains.
“Because we were very nervous making sure that everybody would be safe, that no-one would be electrocuted, that’s why it took us that 90 minutes to two hours before we could get people off the trains.”
He said passengers were directed onto alternative City Loop trains and replacement buses.
“It was inconvenient, but having the City Loop … did give us that backup, we were able to get people onto trains.”
Transport and technology journalist Jeremy Burge was heading into the city on a City Loop train last night when he heard about the Metro Tunnel disruptions.
“Being a transport nerd, [I] walked to State Library to see how the first major disruption to the Metro Tunnel was being handled,” he said.
Mr Burge said the screens that displayed service and schedule information were still indicating that trains were running as normal, half an hour after the lines were shut down.
“I saw staff frantically trying to stop people heading down to the platforms, because if you were transferring at Melbourne Central you’d look at the screen and it would say, ‘Train in five minutes or 10 minutes’ and that was not true,” he said.
“That was definitely the source of confusion.”
He said there was no signage directing passengers to instead take a City Loop train.
“Passenger information displays were also not updated for about 40 minutes or so.
“Staff were having to verbally tell people to turn around.”
