Tony's comparison of journey times on metro and subbarban rail certainly
supports the view that 'Sydney metro is faster than Sydney suburban rail'.
However this does nor immediately generalise to 'metro is faster than
suburban rail'. One has often to dig behind the initial statistical league
table with rational analysis to get a greater understanding of the
situation. The question that keeps occurring to me when I read this and
similar threads is why are the Sydney suburban semi expresses slower than
the all -stops metro? In data analysis and interpretation there is value
in triangulation, ie approaching the data from a number of angles to see if
a consistent view can be obtained on which confidence can be placed and
acttion soundly taken.

Alex C - wearing my rational hat

On Wednesday, January 13, 2021 at 2:47:06 PM UTC+10:30stuart....@...
wrote:

> Dissenters will always be a very tiny bubble. It's only us Roundheads on

> TDU who will argue this until we run out of air, everyone else on the train

> has lives to lead and things to do, the train barely registers on their

> personal radar.

>

> Riders on the NWRL love it because it is a train; it happens to be a metro

> but they would love anything that runs on rails. They've been starved of

> good rail transport for decades and now they have something so of course

> they love it (they'd probably love it more if they could get a decent seat

> and didn't have to stop at every hole between Tallawong and the city but

> that's merely my opinion :)

>

> Satisfaction surveys are about as reliable as political polls. Remember

> that one that said the next PM would be Bill Shorten???

>

> SK

>

> On Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 14:59 TP histor...@...> wrote:

>

>> I'm not going to try run a rational argument against one that distorts

>> facts. In the end, it's the regular commuters who will vote on it and the

>> experience and feedback in the NW suggests that they love it very much and

>> that's from people who experience both systems, so have an actual regular

>> daily-experience basis for comparison, not "feelings" based on infrequent

>> out-of-peak visits. Let's just wait until the rest of the line opens in a

>> couple of years or so and we'll find out that the dissenters turn out to be

>> in fact a tiny bubble.

>>

>> The last TfNSW customer satisfaction survey results were 98% overall

>> satisfaction with ferry services, 96% for metro, 91% for buses and 90% each

>> for light rail and suburban rail. One of the highest points of satisfaction

>> with the metro service (99%) was journey time for the distance travelled.

>> One of the lowest scores on the suburban system (90%) was journey time for

>> the distance travelled - and that would be semi-express travel for longer

>> distances. The suburban system also scored only 88% on frequency of service

>> (cf. metro 95%) and 91% on personal space (cf. metro 95%). But let's not

>> let the facts stand in the way of a good story.

>>

>> I guess the next angle of attack then has to be on unthinking, ignorant

>> commuters who "don't understand" how "bad" they have it on the metro.

>>

>> Out of interest, overall customer satisfaction with suburban trains has

>> been pretty level since 2016, bus satisfaction has been rising slowly,

>> ferry and metro satisfaction have been consistently high (the latter over

>> two years) and light rail satisfaction has been slowly declining, poor

>> frequency and overcrowding being the main areas of dissatisfaction (that

>> would be mainly IWLR). Journey time is not a strong point either and that

>> was mostly before the advent of CSELR set new low standards.

>>

>> Tony P

>>

>

>