The New South Wales government has a cute way of fixing problems - simply move the goal posts, declare victory and the game over - and ignore any protests from the taxpayers.
The peak in petrol prices forced many commuters to leave their cars at home and take public transport - and the present economic meltdown has maintained passenger numbers well above normal capacity at peak times.
One of the problems was the late arrival of trains. People were late for work and employers began rejecting job applicants with a distant home address.
The state government solved this with a stroke of the pen. They declared that " on time " running would include trains that were up to five minutes late. This solved nothing - but at least it made the statistics look better !
Now they are focusing on train overcrowding. This is said to occur when those on the train reach one hundred and thirty five percent over the number of seats provided.
The present standard states that this should not exceed five percent of journeys - but the government proposes to extend that standard to seventeen percent of journeys - and official surveys reveal that overcrowding at this time is already at sixteen percent of journeys - and that includes all peak running.
We then have a fatuous remark by Transport Minister, David Campbell claiming that this overcrowding illustrates what a good job the government is doing with it's rail system.
The minister has the temerity to claim " increased patronage shows confidence our rail network is improving ".
Nothing could be further from the truth. We have less trains - running at slower times - over full of distressed passengers jammed in like sardines - some without toilets on long journeys - and all this is supposed to be a show of confidence by the travelling public !
And to add insult to injury - the fares charged were hiked within the past few days !
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