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Today, Matangi services more than doubled on the Kapiti and Hutt Valley lines – increasing from the current 14 daily return trips to more than 30 return trips every weekday.
Tranz Metro Manager Scott Brooks, calls it great news for commuters “who we know have felt the impact of service disruptions over the last couple of weeks, and we are very pleased to be able to bring them some good news.”
In addition to a number of off-peak services, the Hutt line will have the new Matangi trains operating on seven return services during the morning peak and five return services during the evening peak. The Kapiti line will have seven evening peak services and five morning peak services delivered by Matangi.
A total of 20 two-car Matangi units have now been commissioned and Tranz Metro has 39 qualified Matangi drivers.
MATANGI: Now there are more
Peter Glensor, Chair of Greater Wellington’s Economic Wellbeing Committee, said the Matangi training and Matangi commissioning programme has been aligned so that the amount of Locomotive Engineers (LEs) qualified to drive the trains matches the number of Matangi we have in service. As soon as LEs have completed the training, they are put straight onto an operational Matangi train to avoid skill fade and the need for retraining.
“In addition to this significant increase in Matangi services, we’ve had one more driver come out of training last week and a further four are expected out of training by the end of December.
“I’m confident that with the introduction of more Matangi services and more train drivers by the New Year, customers will be able to see more consistency in service delivery,” Mr Brooks says.
2 Comments
How long a course is that? I may be underrating the complexity of driving a train, but I would have guessed it needs a week tops, for an experienced LE? I mean you don’t train truckies for weeks or months when they get a new rig?
Not dissing anyone, just curious.
@ingolfson
I would guess it would take about 6-12 weeks. LEs need to know practically every subsystem on their train (of which there are far more than on a simple truck), how to fix most of the possible problems, or at least isolate them to continue. Also learning the different acceleration and braking characteristics of driving the Matangis would take quite a bit of practical experience to be able to make precise and comfortable stops with the rather different braking equipment as well as learning how much power is nessecary to keep to the timetables of the much less powerful units.