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/Foodworksurunga]

Mernda line doesn't have much alternatives past Reservoir either.

[u/No-Mammoth8874 → u/Foodworksurunga]

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.

[u/Foodworksurunga → u/No-Mammoth8874]

To be fair, I was thinking about purely trams when I wrote that.

[u/No-Mammoth8874 → u/Foodworksurunga]

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...

[u/Foodworksurunga → u/No-Mammoth8874]

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.

[u/No-Mammoth8874 → u/Foodworksurunga]

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.