Public Transport in South Australia

Posted on November 29, 2011

Over the past few months, commuters have experienced significant problems with public transport services in South Australia.

In October, Transfield took over bus contracts from Torrens Transit along the Outer North East and North South regions. However, this contract changeover has had a number of adverse effects for commuters all over Adelaide, with buses often running late, or not all, and drivers getting lost on routes.

On top of this, Labor is only able to impose financial penalties on Transfield in January – this doesn’t give Transfield much of an incentive to fix their service faults as quickly as possible for the benefit of commuters!
Train commuters have also been inconvenienced over the past month by switching problems and mechanical breakdowns that have caused disruptions to train services.

Public transport is an essential service in any city and people should have confidence that a bus, train or tram is going to get them to their destination on time.

But unfortunately, Labor’s mismanagement of public transport over the years has meant that South Australians have lost faith in our public transport system.

It is hardly surprising that there has been a 4.2% drop in public transport use for the 12 months to the 31st of August this year – and that was before all of these recent service problems!

South Australians deserve an effective and efficient public transport system, but at the moment, public transport is not even meeting the basic needs of commuters in this State.

As we approach one of the busiest times of the year with the summer school holidays, it seems that commuters will only continue to be inconvenienced by these public transport problems in the foreseeable future.