More than one in four trains between Campbelltown and Schofields on the T5 Cumberland line are without air-conditioning, documents obtained under freedom of information have revealed.
The request lodged by Campbelltown MP Greg Warren showed that of the 14,441 timetabled services on the T5 Cumberland line in the 2016 calendar year, 3,977 used carriages without air-conditioning, which equates to 27.5 percent or just over one in four.
Mr Warren said that the data completely contradicted the Liberal Government’s repeated claims that non-air-conditioned train carriages are only used as a back-up when newer trains are taken out of the fleet for maintenance.
Mr Warren also requested data for the T4 Eastern Suburbs line as a point of comparison, which revealed that commuters in the Eastern Suburbs had only nine non-air-conditioned services in all of 2016 – less than the daily average for commuters on the T5 Cumberland line.
The revelation comes just weeks after the Berejiklian Government announced its plans to cut all direct train services from Campbelltown to Liverpool, Parramatta and Blacktown.
“This confirms what local commuters have known all along – that the Liberal Government’s repeated claim that non-air-conditioned trains are only used as a back-up simply doesn’t stack up,’’ Mr Warren said.
“For Campbelltown commuters to be forced to put up with non-air-conditioned trains a quarter of the time, day after day, while in the Eastern Suburbs they only had nine non-air-conditioned services in a whole year, shows just how little this Liberal Government cares about the people of Campbelltown.
[social_quote duplicate=”no” align=”default”]“We pay the same train fares here as everyone else does in other parts of Sydney, so it’s only fair to expect that the non-air-conditioned trains should be shared evenly across the network – and this new data shows that simply isn’t happening.[/social_quote]
“Rather than sharing the burden of non-air-conditioned trains evenly across the network, the Berejiklian Government’s so-called solution to the problem is to just cut all the train services on the Cumberland line altogether – that’s not good enough, and I will keep fighting them until they offer a real solution to this ongoing issue.”
Just another example of how this Liberal government makes it easy for their supporters as they do with schools, hospitals and public transport generally