Eastern Suburbs & Illawarra Railway Line - Performance

Performance

In 2009-2010, 97.65% of all Eastern suburbs and Illwarra services ran on-time, ranking it the most reliable line on the CityRail network.

Planning experts recognised a need to expand capacity on the Eastern Suburbs Line. In 2002, former CityRail chairman Ron Christie released a report, the "Long-term strategic plan for rail", which outlined the critical infrastructure that would need to be built between then and 2050 to ensure the long-term survival and operation of the CityRail network. The report highlighted the problems facing the network at that time and noted that capacity on Illawarra Line trains was often at 120%, and that 180% was not unexpected. Christie said that by 2011 there would be no capacity on the Eastern Suburbs Line for trains coming from the Illawarra Line. To address this, the NSW Government constructed the Bondi Junction Turnback, which enables an additional six trains per hour to terminate at the station. To take advantage of the new infrastructure, a new timetable was introduced in May 2006 which reduced the overcrowding.

A second project, the full duplication of the Cronulla branch line, was completed in 2010. This increases the capacity of the branch line from four to eight trains per hour. The line between Oatley, Sutherland and Cronulla also received signalling upgrades to allow more services to run at shorter intervals. A new timetable with extra services was introduced on 10 October 2010.

It is proposed in the 2007 NSW State Plan that by 2017, the line capacity between Hurstville and Sutherland will be amplified to allow extra services to and from Cronulla, as well as for services accessing the Mortdale Maintenance Centre. The 2010 Metropolitan Transport Plan made no mention of the project.