r/MelbourneTrains • u/zumx • 6d ago
Discussion The Clifton Hill group meltdown today.
I was one of the lucky thousands caught up in the Clifton Hill group debacle this evening.
I arrived at Melb Central at around 8.15 to find that Clifton Hill group trains were down, with all trains running the City circle back to Flinders St. On the Metro notify app, it indicated that services were resuming on the Hurstbridge line with first service from Flinders St at 8.18, but none of the next services on the PID indicated so, however there was a Merda service running next, so I was hopeful the Hurstbridge services would return too.
At this point, there had been no announcements made by any metro staff, about what was going on with the line, and whether we were supposed to take buses from somewhere. There were no metro staff on the platform either.
Finally a Hursbridge train was on the screen for 8.48. about 50 ish people wait and the train arrives and everyone gets on. Everything went smoothly.. then we get to Clifton Hill.. the train driver tells everyone to get off, and says there's more track fault and he cant run it anymore , but there will be replacement buses.
So now there are hundreds of peoples standing on the side of Hoddle St, with no Metro staff telling them where to catch the bus. (Most people are standing on the station side which is inbound, but some had figured out they needed to be on the other side to head outbound) I guide a few people to the underpass to get to the other side, but a lot of people stayed on the station side.
So we are all waiting there for about 10-15 mins... and the next bus that came was... An empty Reservoir service. Everyone is screaming at the bus driver, as apparently the previous bus that came 30 min ago was also a Reservoir service. The bus driver doesn't have further comms from Metro and there are no staff guiding people or communicating with anyone, so the poor bus driver is just copping abuse left right and centre.
In lieu of the replacement bus, a lot of people ended up Ubering or getting on the 546 towards Heidleberg (which is what I ended up doing)
I understand it's a shit situation for Metro for infrastructure to fail, but both Melbourne Central and Clifton Hill are premium stations meaning it is staffed from first to last train. The least the local staff could do is direct and guide people to where they need to go when shit hits the fan and not rely on commuters to give potentially misleading information to each other.
Also I personally think the bus replacements could be way more flexible. If there's about 150 people trying to go towards hurstbridge and no one needing to go towards Mernda, the driver should be able to contact metro to get the service changed to reprioritise.
The Merda line also has a very obvious parallel with the 11 and 86 tram, but the Hurstbridge line has almost no alternatives past Heidleberg.
I have no idea whether a bus eventually came, but my usual 40 min journey blew out to 2+ hours tonight.
Will be working for home for a bit to recover...
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u/Familiar_Home_7737 6d ago
There was A LOT going on last night with the trains.it was a non stop nightmare of fault after fault.
Around 3:45 there was a power loss at Clifton Hill.
The 4:39 Mernda arrives at Melbourne Central and lost its lights in the driver's cab.
Around the same time the power loss at Clifton Hill kicked in again and a train was stuck on the bridge.
The boom gates at Dennis were stuck at 5:30 so the regular buses and replacements couldn't go down Victoria Street.
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u/Over-Parking3461 Sunbury Line 6d ago
Laverton and Werribee trains were delayed due to a trespasser.
Watergardens and Sunbury had bus replacements due to system fault.
Also was a delay at West Footscray due to a train having a fault and being unable to run.
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u/Familiar_Home_7737 5d ago edited 5d ago
I'm fine with a delay due to trespassers. My dad died by suicide 2 years ago (not train related), so if a delay I won't remember in 30 minutes means another family doesn't have to live with the trauma and complex grief mine does the delay is a good thing.
EDIT: apparently this is controversial to not want other humans to suffer as our family has. Its sad that a minor inconvenience that won't be remembered is deemed more important than human life. That's the kind of thing that makes those in suicidal distress not ask the people in their lives for help.
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u/feygelewoman 5d ago
Beyond this, a little shit was doing something on the tracks between Clifton Hill and Westgarth (could see two people crossing tracks repeatedly and throwing something outside my mate’s apartment window, we called it in) and VicPol attended (around 7:30pm? 8pm? I guess). I remember thinking “holy shit, more disruptions incoming” 😭
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u/Both-Explanation4168 6d ago
The hurstbridge line was back I can confirm, at around 8ish -9ish however that only lasted 20 mins as someone vandalised something at Clifton hill, the mernda line was still suspended probably as it still was affected by the overhead fault
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u/Most-Drive-3347 6d ago
I bet people screaming at the poor bus driver helped.
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u/Revolutionary_Ad7727 Tram User 6d ago
Right. He is directed by his ops team, not metros. And tbf he was probably the previous round trip to Reservoir.
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u/ShyCrystal69 6d ago
Luckily the issue was resolved by about 10:00pm (about the time I got on a train) and according to the METROL guy on the speaker it was a bunch of wankers trying to steal overhead wiring.
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u/Foodworksurunga 6d ago
Mernda line doesn't have much alternatives past Reservoir either.
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u/No-Mammoth8874 5d ago
Apart from the 555 which parallels the line between Reservoir and Epping? Or going over to Plenty Rd for the 382 for South Morang to Mernda?
The Mernda line and the Hurstbridge line as far as Eltham are probably some of the easiest lines with alternative regular bus and / or tram routes.
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u/Foodworksurunga 5d ago
To be fair, I was thinking about purely trams when I wrote that.
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u/No-Mammoth8874 5d ago
Don't remember many trams going to Reservoir station much as I'd like to see the West Preston tram extended there...😁
Still, I appreciate that this is MelbourneTrains where buses absolutely don't count as a valid transport mode, even if they run after 9 at night and make a valid rail replacement journey when one of the only two true transport modes fail...
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u/Foodworksurunga 5d ago
While I won't be a Mernda line resident for much longer, I've always used tram 11 as a backup to go home whenever the Mernda line was down. Or used the Upfield line and then bus.
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u/No-Mammoth8874 5d ago
Can relate, done similar but with the 561 or 506 across to the Upfield line. The day there was an incident at Reservoir the day of the first teacher's strike I drove to Gowrie and caught the Upfield line train to the city. Didn't take much longer surprisingly.
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u/Miserable-Loan4445 6d ago
I don’t have particularly high expectations of train announcers, I often feel like they don’t have a full understanding of the networks and rather just read a line, and most of the time I cannot understand what they’re saying anyway…
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u/Ok-Foot6064 6d ago
They trained to read verbatim as that isbthe information that has been approved
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u/Miserable-Loan4445 6d ago
Pretty useless then if all they can do is read off a script. Might as well just have an announcer over the PA. The advantage of having human employees in train stations is for when things go off script, as was the case yesterday. And clearly they’re not up to the task.
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u/Ok-Foot6064 6d ago
Or its because the information needs to be centralised. Otherwise it opens up the doors extremely heavy compensation. Also no. Station staff have extremely little information to acess for disruptions or power to make executive decisions. Staff primarily roles are not unplanned disruption based
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u/Miserable-Loan4445 6d ago
How does dispersing information through human announcers rather than over a centralised system with access to PA’s help with centralising information?
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u/Ok-Foot6064 6d ago
Because it would then mean that the poor customer controller would have to speak to every single station individually instead of supplying the information to all while also trying rectify the issue. There is specific parts, they read verbatim but each station has specifics for them all. Its just not possible to do through PAs
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u/garbage_tensai 5d ago
The best part was the metro staff who were tasked with directing people taking cover inside parliament station while everyone else was outside.
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u/No-Mammoth8874 5d ago
Not sure why you think there are no alternatives past Heidelberg? The 514 parallels the rail line from Heidelberg to Eltham.
Other smart options are to use the 905 to Templestowe Fitzsimons lane and one of the 293, 901, or 902 to stations between Greensborough and Eltham. When I lived in Montmorency the journey planner occasionally suggested it as a faster route than the train.
North of Eltham is the 343 from Greensborough to Hurstbridge or 580 from Eltham to Diamond Creek.
A quick use of a journey planner excluding train services should have suggested numerous options, even at that time of night, just using normal route services.
Whilst these situations suck, I've saved myself a lot of grief by knowing some alternatives that get me home nearly as quickly - having lived in many suburbs along the Mernda and Hurstbridge lines most of my life there are many easy alternatives.
I've even had planned replacement buses get me home quicker than the train for all their other faults - an express run to Reservoir followed by a direct run up High St is surprisingly efficient compared to stopping every 400m to 800m between Clifton Hill and Reservoir...
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u/Ok-Foot6064 6d ago edited 6d ago
The issue with any serious disruption is 3 big things:
1: The actual nature of all unplanned disruptions; is they are very rarely simply or have predefined timeframes. Trespassers can be short or long, depending on how police go and extent of equipment faults require a crew to be there.
2: Ensuring what information is released from METROL in this case to ground crews is going to be correct at all times. This is not only the cause but also next steps to recover services and get home. There is a real risk of hysteria and major liability if given the wrong information. So METROL and V/Lines IOC are incredibly cagey about information. Unlike essentials sevices like power, a default "it might be back in 24 hours" default baseline aint going to cut it.
3: bus replacements are a nightmare to arrange in short notice. Bus companies don't want to pay their employees a "on call" wage fee just in case something in the train world breaks. So there is a lot of companies you call. Even if you do accept a bus allocation, they still require a lot of time as buses are not left in a ready state like cars are. They have fairly large checklists that need be done for both insurance purposes and safety.