Replacement buses for cancelled trains are costing Victoria up to $300,000 a day as the price of the regional rail crisis tops $33 million - with millions more to come.
V/Line faces months of replacing trains with buses because of a wheel wear problem, which remains unsolved, and an issue where boom gates failed to trigger on regional trains.
Both problems affect VLocity trains, the most modern in V/Line's fleet.
Interim chief executive Gary Liddle said the state was spending up to $300,000 a day hiring 200 coaches to replace trains.
Facing a number of questions in parliament, Public Transport Minister Jacinta Allan said decisions had been made to protect passengers.
"Our priority is passenger safety," Ms Allan told question time on Tuesday.
"There has been a lot of work gone on."
Commuters got 16 days of free travel in compensation, costing the state more than $4 million.
They also get free travel if their train is replaced with a bus, costing an estimated $200,000 a week.
With a $23 million axle counter installation program, the cost is set to top $45 million by March 18, when interim safety measures are meant to be complete.
The axle counters, designed to ensure trains trigger boom gates, should be installed at 29 level crossings by July.
Mr Liddle said the busier timetable introduced last year was predicted to cause more wheel wear.
"We actually forecast an increase in wheel wear as a result of those increased kilometres that we're travelling," Mr Liddle told a parliamentary inquiry.
"We planned to manage that increase ... but that increase was substantially more than forecast."
Mr Liddle said V/Line had increased lubrication on the tracks, and had taken delivery of new wheels to replace the worn ones.
Metro Trains engineering manager Paul O'Halloran said new strategies were also being put in place to stop VLocity trains from failing to trip boom gates, after an incident in Dandenong in January.
"That incident challenged our confidence in the effectiveness of the mitigation strategies (used so far)," Mr O'Halloran told the inquiry.
Mr Liddle said V/Line's funding had been reduced in recent years.
TRAIN PAIN
- Trains regularly cancelled from Jan 16
- 200 replacement buses cost up to $300,000 a day
- 16 days of free travel cost more than $4 million
- Free bus travel set to cost $200,000 a week
- Bus use reduces from March 18
- All work due to be done by July
Source: V/Line
Share
