Not long after the train system was privatised, various adjustments were made by Connex. One of these involved stopping a few express trains at Surrey Hills station. At first it was only a very small handful of services, so to most people it went unnoticed. Though some time later this was increased, so now a fair number of express services stop there.
The justification was that travel time would not be increased as improvements to track meant time would be regained further down the line. However, travel time is probably not the biggest and only concern of passengers. For one, by doing this it provides less room for late running services to catch up, thus contributing towards unreliability. Another factor is that it complicates the timetable and creates more confusion for passengers. There are already enough variations in train stopping patterns without trains stopping here.
In addition, it is usually trains that don’t stop at Glenferrie and sometimes even Camberwell that gain the extra stop at Surrey Hills. This may seem reasonable at first, since surely these lucky ’super express’ passengers could put up with an extra stop? Well in actual fact these express trains are usually very packed to begin with. Which brings us to the next point….
The biggest problem this creates is that more passengers are being crammed into already overcrowded express trains. It isn’t so obvious when travelling from the city, you can’t tell that you are crammed in like a sardine because a few extra people will be getting off at Surrey Hills. Though it’s more obvious when you’re on a crowded city bound train.
This morning while taking the 7:56am City Loop train from Box Hill, I managed to take these photos. They’re rather crude, though they do show how crowded the train was before it stopped at Surrey Hills. You can’t tell from the photo, but few, if any people get off when the train stops here (no one in the carriage got off from what I could tell). So here they are:
Probably the last consideration remaining is what it all means for Surrey Hills people. It may seem like a nice gesture to give them some express trains, though in reality I don’t think a handful of trains is going to be that useful. Even with Glenferrie which gets far more express services, enough don’t stop there that you can’t rely on getting an express train every time you travel from there in peak hour. One might also argue that a fair number of people use Surrey Hills. Even if that is true, I can only think that they may in future find some justification in stopping express services at Canterbury, East Camberwell, Auburn, Hawthorn… you get the idea.
A better solution might be to co-ordinate services so that passengers can transfer to an express from a stopping-all-stations train.
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