I REFER to your article in Monday’s Central Western Daily about public transport between Orange and Sydney.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Transport is like most things, the further west you go the worse it becomes. While its name has and will again change, wait not for the service to improve.
It has been said that NSW stands for Newcastle, Sydney and Wollongong. Unfortunately, Orange is not mentioned.
Let me tell you what happened to us last Sunday.
We arrived back in Australia early in the morning to complete our journey to Orange. It was before 6.45 am when I rang CountryLink to book our seats on the train and the mandatory coach from Lithgow to Orange.
I was told that the coach which met the 12.18pm train from Sydney was fully booked. We had to hang around until the 2.18 train. Having no choice, we did book on this train and coach connection.
By then it was torturous to ride in basically an all-station slow train.
However, when we arrived in Lithgow, we were told that we should not have been booked on this coach as it was fully booked. The driver was able to find us couple of seats.
How can Orange be regarded as a destination when public transport is so inconvenient?
Surely it should be easier to catch a train. How far ahead should one have to book to catch a train?
What does it take to get it changed? What is being considered to improve the service? We deserve more train services than the XPT. We pay considerably more than Bathurst passengers; we deserve at least service we can rely on.
Surely we should not have to wait for a state election for Orange electorate’s transport needs to be recognised (as was the case for Bathurst).
What would it take for bureaucracy to work out that the so-called Bathurst Bullet could be refuelled in Orange, just as the Outback train does in Broken Hill?
In the meantime can we get sufficient coach capacity to meet the needs of booked passengers?
It may be railway’s intention to make travel more inconvenient so that people find alternative ways, or do not travel, so that management will find the trains uneconomical and terminate all country trains.
Chris Visman,
Orange