Commuters unhappy at train crowding
Commuters in south-east Queensland are angry at shoulder-to-shoulder crowding on trains and soaring ticket prices across the public transport network, according to a Newsbytes street poll.
One Brisbane commuter said trains were “packed to the rafters” in peak hours.
“I think they need more trains to allow people to get in and out,” he said.
A woman we spoke to said the train from the Gold Coast was called the “Bombay express”.
Head of lobby group Back On Track, Robert Dow, said urgent work was needed on the rail network.
“The rail network in south east Queensland has been neglected for a long period of time,” he said.
But he believed adding trains to the network would not solve the problem of train crowding.
“There are trains coming every three minutes in peak hour – you really can’t add more services there, so that isn’t the solution,” he said.
Mr Dow said raising ticket prices was a transparent strategy to force people to use Go Cards.
Peak hour commuters board a city train.
“It is obviously the strategy that Translink adopted under the auspices of the previous government.”
He said price increases were unfair to people who were unaware of the Go Card scheme.
”It is unfair to people who don’t know any better and who are unintentionally paying more.
“I think that paper tickets should be done away with completely.”
Mr Dow said Queensland Rail’s plans to introduce a tourist discount card could see the end of paper tickets for good.
A Queensland Rail spokesperson said there were 131 peak AM services and 118 peak PM services.
Asked to comment on carriage crowding the spokesperson referred Newsbytes to a media release outlining changes proposed by the previous government’s Transport Minister Annastacia Palaszczuk, who is now Opposition leader.