Melbourne’s tram system has had its worst month for punctuality in at least a year, with 12-month lows in punctuality both throughout trips, and at the final destination, recorded in February.
Public Transport Victoria (PTV) announced late last week that the average metropolitan tram in Melbourne arrived at its final destination ‘on time’ just 66.2% of the time.
In terms of punctuality over the entire trip, which takes into account the timeliness at a selection of stops along each line, trams arrived at their stops ‘on time’ just 78.9% of the time.
By the PTV’s definition, any tram arriving at a stop or final destination within four minutes and 59 seconds of timetable is considered ‘on time’.
That means 20.1% of all tram stops were made in Melbourne at least five minutes late in February, and 33.8% arrived at their final destination at least five minutes past schedule.
Both figures were the worst recorded by PTV in the last 12 months.
Over the last 12 months since February 2014, trams have arrived at their stops within five minutes of schedule 83.6% of the time, making the February 2015 figure 4.7 percentage points below the 12-month average.
And Melbourne trams have arrived at their final destination ‘on time’ 73.9% of the time in the past 12 months, making the February 2015 figure 7.7 percentage points below the 12-month average.
Yarra Trams, which operates Melbourne’s metropolitan tram network, put the poor result down to “a high number of special events, major tram improvement projects, traffic congestion and third party incidents.”
Major infrastructure upgrades included building a new level access stop in Elgin Street in Carlton, tram power upgrade work on St Georges Road in Thornbury, and track renewal on Toorak Road, Toorak.
“These projects caused a total of two weeks’ disruption to trams on the busy Swanston Street and St Kilda Road corridor, as well as on Collins Street.”
Significant special events included the Pride March, the St Kilda Festival, the ICC World Cup and White Night.
In better news, PTV announced the fifteenth consecutive month of an ‘on-time’ rate of 90% across the Melbourne Metro train network, hitting 92.3% in February 2015.
PTV also announced that V/Line delivered a 90.7 on-time record in February.
“After a period of improved results, it’s great that these improved performance levels have been maintained across our rail network,” Victorian Public Transport chief executive Mark Wild said.
“With services running on-time more often, customers can enjoy the stability and reliability of knowing they have services that will get them where they need to go.”