Subscribe to RSSAuckland, Wellington Train Commuters Stranded
A major Western Line meltdown this morning left people stranded on stations and those who managed to eventually get a train, were very late for work and school.
The problem was a signal collapse at New Lynn. Weekend work was being done between Avondale and New Lynn at the weekend but there’s no indication if this contributed to the problem.
And in Wellington, a power failure halted trains this morning leaving commuters stuck on trains for an hour, and eventually let out to walk along the tracks to their destination.(picture here)
There were no announcements to the stranded Wellington commuters- a problem Tranz Metro had promised to fix.
Queues –and despondency- grew quickly at the Auckland Western Line stations I visited.
At Morningside (above), there was the bizarre sight of people who had waited for up to 45 minutes for a train and were still waiting – while the west-bound train on the other track was stuck, unable to proceed.
Roll on the RWC, when these problems may still be with us.
And public transport for everyone else is only ever going to work if it’s reliable. I lost track of people I overheard saying they were giving up. I hope they don’t really mean it.
And shame on Maxx. The new super website (which promises something called My Maxx coming soon) has absolutely no information about any breakdown.
3 Comments
I was one stuck on a train with no updates other than the text messages Veolia send out which almost always have the wrong info in them anyway or are not on time to be effective.
The express train was turned into an all stops and had a 30 min wait at New Lynn. I was lucky enough to have a seat as things were getting pretty crowded.
I was stuck on the Western line into town this morning, an hour journey to Britomart became 1.5 hours.
Such a shame the company doesn’t put more effort into ensuring the service works even during extensive upgrades to platforms.
To make matters worse, we were overfull and of course, the company refuses to refund the journey despite offering a poor service.
In Wellington the cause was part of the overhead coming adrift from the hangers. The low hanging cable got beneath the pantos, four in total, and pretty much destroyed them. There had been a weekend close down for work on the new line and overhead but I don’t think this was in any way connected with this mornings problems.