Yes, long live different opinions!Fleet Lists wrote: That does not mean that we all agree with you on that subject
The point I was making is that, even when there's a nice, long, unrestricted, modern length of line of similar standard to Perth's in Sydney, the trains here still don't let rip, but continue to amble along. The feedback I get from Sydney Trains people on Railpage is that to do so would upset operations in other parts of the network because it's all interrelated and it all has to be slowed down for everything to work. That may well be the case, but it's hardly a satisfactory situation for long-distance operations that are the very nature of a suburban commuter train service.Linto63 wrote:Without wanting to tread over the whole Perth vs Sydney argument for the umpteenth time (there is a thread titled 'Perth Compared with other cities' in the General Transport section for those interested), the two are completely different.
This is why the metro is a better solution even for longer-distance services in Sydney's case. As isolated new-builds, they bypass all the restrictions of the old system - restrictions that look like they're going to take decades to overcome. To assist those who can't come to terms with the concept of a "metro" doing distance work, they should stop calling the thing a metro, because it's really a blend of metro and Perth-style S-bahn. It needs a new word to describe it ("Perthbahn" lol?), plus it could do with another 20-30km/h on the maximum speed of the trains (i.e. TfNSW should also stop thinking of it as just another metro).
To give a more extreme example of how much better a "metro" service would be over a long distance in the Sydney context, let me dream wistfully of a metro line being extended from Sydney to Wollongong to solve the present terrible situation (both journey time and capacity). Once again, taking Perth as a yardstick, this would be be the equivalent of Mandurah to Stirling in Perth, where it takes 60 minutes (compressing the 2 minute stop at Perth Underground) with 13 intermediate stops. The NSW Train presently takes 90 minutes to Wollongong with 7 intermediate stops. The former can offer 4 minute headways, the latter struggles with half-hourly headways - and the former can offer many more seats per hour and the convenience of nearly twice as many stops (if it needs to).
In any other railway discussion elsewhere, the notion of a metro being used for an 80 km intercity link would be laughable, but in Sydney, when you look at the above figures, it's devastatingly feasible. That's the example it takes for it to sink in how completely dreadful the present train system is. And before anybody asks, I can confidently say, without even asking them, that the people of Illawarra would be overjoyed to sit for an hour in a simple metro/S-bahn carriage than stand for 1 1/2 hours in whatever superduper luxury train comes out of South Korea.