Funny story and might explain a bit. Husband of a woman I worked with was the GM of a certain part of State Rail. Thus is just after the poms were bought in to run the joint. Anyways - he's near retirement - they made it clear they'd be cutting costs and he didn't want to wear that so took a half mill redundancy.
Six months later they re-employed him as a consultant. He agreed only on the basis he was given same resources as b4. Exactly the same work he did before on basically twice the pay. According to him, management have shaved it so much its not a question of when a train turns up - its now if.
Avoided mentioning which bit of rail he works in but can tell you its a bit that fails a lot. By my understanding its a madhouse.
I knew David Hill, who was CEO of State Rail many years ago. At one stage, he was also brought back to fix issues with late running and cancelled services.
He told me that the biggest issue was the Campbelltown line - and the main cause was the points at Glenfield.
Hill is the type who doesn't just read the reports, he gets the engineers and goes with them to the site to see for himself.
The Glenfield points were affected by the clay base which moved every time it rained and dried out, causing them to get stuck.
Hill instructed the engineers to fix it - "I don't care what it costs!". The engineers said, "We don't work for you, David. The government sold off the various parts of State Rail to new owners - and we don't have the budget. Sorry."
Hill went back to the minister and told him it was a waste of f...ing time to have brought him back to fix something that he has no control over.
In his first term, the CEO was Number One and his word was law - but not any longer. Different organisations look after the rollingstock, the tracks, the stations, the signalling, and they all answer to different masters - all to save the government some money.
And now, we have a Chinese consortium operating the Metros for profit (guaranteed by taxpayers).
There is no holistic approach anymore.
