The New South Wales premier, Dominic Perrottet, has apologised for a peak-hour meltdown of the Sydney rail network less than three weeks out from the state election.
The shutdown on Wednesday afternoon left tens of thousands of passengers stranded, with Uber fares spiking to hundreds of dollars in surge-price fees.
Amid a backlash on Thursday, Uber promised to reimburse customers who were charged the surge prices.
Perrottet apologised for the system shutdown and said he had ordered a fare-free day be instituted as a result. “These challenges occur from time to time,” he said.
“What’s most important is when they happen they get fixed immediately. I’ve been assured by the secretary of the Department of Transport that this won’t happen again.”
Immediately after the network shutdown the retiring transport minister, David Elliott, said it was most likely the result of a “glitch” but also suggested it may have been caused by “foreign interference or industrial sabotage”.
Those concerns were dismissed by transport chiefs on Thursday, who blamed a fault in the network’s communications.
Transport for NSW said the network had been shut down for safety reasons after the digital train radio system on the network failed about 2.45pm. The system was back online within about an hour but delays ensued into the peak period.
The head of Sydney Trains, Matt Longland, said “based on the detailed review overnight” the delays had been caused by a failure in a piece of technology and were not “related to any suspected issue in terms of any cyber activity or any anything of that nature”.
The failure came in the network’s emergency system, known as Frequentis, which Longland said was managed by a third-party “technology partner”.
A backup system supposed to kick in in the event of a fault had not worked, he said, something Sydney Trains was still investigating. Asked on Thursday whether the system should be run in-house, he said the agency made case-by-case decisions.
“The decision that we made at the time in 2016 was really about buying a proven system that operates internationally,” he said.
“That’s the system that we’ve got. It has been operating very reliably but certainly it’s a case-by-case basis in terms of technology.”
The shutdown – that followed months of chaos on the network last year, stemming from an industrial dispute with the state rail union – was seized on by the NSW Labor party, with the shadow transport minister, Jo Haylen, saying the government had failed to manage the city’s rail network.
“The lights were out across Sydney trains but they were also out in the retiring transport minister’s office,” she said.
The Greens MP Sue Higginson encouraged those stuck in Sydney’s “train chaos” to send their rideshare or taxi receipts to the premier, Dominic Perrottet, and the NSW Liberals.
I encourage everyone stuck in train chaos in Sydney this afternoon to send their rideshare or taxi receipts to @Dom_Perrottet and @NSWLiberals_RB #nswpol #sydneytrains
— Sue Higginson (@SueHigginson_) March 8, 2023
@Uber shame on you!!!! Sydney trains being down is not your excuse to do this pic.twitter.com/7iTXTI1LpI
— Lala (@Lala_Tweet28) March 8, 2023
Elliott said the glitch could have occurred under any government. “The comments made by the Greens and Labor MPs simply reinforce the point that both are desperately trying to score political points from a highly operational transport issue,” Elliott said.
“The fact is that this operational issue (glitch in router/modem) could and would have occurred under any minister or government. Unless of course the Greens and Labor parties know something we all don’t.”
Uber said it had not been alerted by Transport for NSW about the outage, and people who were charged above the surge cap would be refunded within 48 hours.
“While in the past we have been alerted by Transport for NSW when there were Sydney-wide transport issues, in this instance we had no warning that there would be such a complete outage on the NSW trains network,” the spokesperson said.
Uber said that as soon as it became aware of the situation, the company had “immediately” lowered the surge and communicated with driver-partners encouraging them to come online.
