Headaches continue for regional commuters after outage
Regional trains have been canceled for a second day after a Telstra outage halted service indefinitely and left passengers stranded.
Passengers voiced their frustrations as they waited for new buses at Melbourne’s Southern Cross Station on Thursday morning.
The outage began at 4.30am on Wednesday, but despite Telstra resuming phone calls on Wednesday night, Victoria’s regional rail remains offline and it is unknown when it will be back up and running.
V/Line CEO Will Tieppo said work was done overnight to repair the connection between train radio systems and the control center.
“We are currently in the process of testing each of the train units here in Melbourne,” Mr Tieppo told reporters at Southern Cross Station on Thursday. he said.
He said he hoped services would resume by Thursday’s afternoon peak but made no promises after previous targets for a return fell through on Wednesday afternoon.
Some passengers had to spend the night in city hotels because there were not enough buses on the V/Line to replace more than 300 canceled trips.
On Thursday, the platforms at the train station were largely cleared of traffic, while passengers flocked to the bus terminal for a limited number of replacement services.
While V/Line employees handed out snacks to families, couples and returning vacationers, service announcements were blaring overhead.
Old lady Pam Promnicz was struggling to get back to Warrnambool, worried she had too many bags for the coach.
“I’d rather be on a train,” he told AAP.
He claimed that the V/Line service, which left Warrnambool before the Telstra outage, was also disrupted for different reasons.
“This is for you, Victoria,” he said.
Network engineer Brian Rigby said the outages could have been avoided if V/Line had not been so reliant on the Telstra network.
“When Telstra has outages, they are major outages,” he said.
“You wonder what will happen next time they go down and stay on the ground.”
He said Thursday’s cancellations added two train legs to his journey from the Pilbara to Traralgon.
“I’ve already been traveling for 15 hours, which makes the journey a little longer,” he said.
“We’re actually used to it.”
Melbourne dad Michael said he would buy a car if he lived regionally because of the unreliability of the V/Line.
“It’s so unreliable that if you can afford it, you’re better off driving,” he said.
“The amount of headaches you hear never ends.”
On Thursday, Communications Minister Annika Wells said telecommunications regulator ACMA had begun preliminary investigations into the outage, which affected transport, businesses, emergency services and healthcare.
Last year, Ms. Wells increased penalties for telecommunications companies that violate triple-zero obligations to $30 million.
