" The worst train system in the world ".

Just three days before a state election the Iemma Labor government was rocked by a report that compared the railway systems in comparable cities - and declared that " Sydney has the worst train system in the world ".
This merely reinforces what Sydney commuters have known for years. Our rail is barely " third world " with slow and unreliable trains, packed like sardines and without toilets in many cases. To add insult to injury, fares are substantially higher than the state of the art rail systems in other countries.
How did this happen ? Previous governments of both political persuasions have put railways at the back of the list of spending options. The government of Bob Carr decided to make political capital by way of a great leap forward - the provision of new, state of the art trains. This was the era of the promised " Millennium train " - which arrived years late and with cost over-runs in the millions - and simply didn't work ! It was so full of " whiz bang " electronics that it was incompatible with our steam age signalling systems - and had to be " dumbed down " before it was brought into service.
We still have steam age tracks and signalling systems and there is no hope of a modern rail system until the government bites the bullet and invests the money necessary to bring rail into the twenty-first century - even if that means taking the state into debt.
There is no mention of such a plan by either political party with an election just days away. Both promise " improvements " but the work necessary to fully modernise the NSW rail system extends far beyond that word. " Replace " would probably fill the bill, but that seems to be a bridge too far for our political leaders !