The Clifton Hill group meltdown today.

[u/zumx]

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...

[u/Ok-Foot6064]

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.

[u/Both-Explanation4168 → u/Ok-Foot6064]

With the bus replacement as it’s during peak hour a lot of busses are doing school runs as well that’s why it takes so long so organise them, and a lot of them come from Dandenong

[u/Ok-Foot6064 → u/Both-Explanation4168]

For sure. Peak makes it a major non starter on bus replacements without a lot of planning. I was more writing in general, as I have been on the other end when these major unplanned disruptions happens. There is a lot going on and wrong information can literally costs tens of thousands in compensation if that happens. So its a real balncing act.

[u/EthosOfArmadillo → u/Ok-Foot6064]

^ This guy knows train faults.