Night rail services in Sydney have become a sticking point in union talks ahead of strike action

One of the reasons why Sydney trains are coming to a halt this weekend is that it’s a fairly uncontroversial situation in other major global cities.

The NSW rail union has asked the state government to operate 24-hour train services across Sydney from Friday to Sunday to avoid business disruption.

Transport Minister Jo Haylen said it was not possible for the government to continue night train services due to maintenance.

“We can’t jeopardize the maintenance of the rail system and we can’t jeopardize the services that people actually need to get to work and home in the morning.”

Restarting Sydney’s 24-hour train service would be costly and require changes to operations and maintenance schedules, experts say.

Sydney’s night trains ended 35 years ago

Sydney had a 24-hour train network until 1989, when the Greiner Liberal government ended night train services.

Geoffrey Clifton, senior lecturer in transport management at the University of Sydney, said night train services were stopped because security costs were too high and maintenance too difficult to undertake.

“Security costs were so expensive, there had to be security guards on every train and every platform,” Dr Clifton said.

“By running services overnight, they were unable to perform maintenance throughout the night and therefore would have to schedule more maintenance at other times of the day.”

The trains were replaced by the nightly NightRide bus service, which still operates today from midnight to 4:30 a.m.

Dr Clifton said Transport for NSW was using the night to protect its fleet of trains, tracks and stations.

“We’re not running 24-hour trains at the moment because the night hours… the network is used to doing all this kind of work that you can’t do when the trains are running,” he said.

He said existing night bus replacement services had been operating “fairly successfully” for the past 35 years.

Other global cities have night trains

In 2016, Melbourne introduced 24-hour weekend train services, which have received strong patronage mostly from tourists, revelers and shift workers.

Public Transport Users Association spokesman Daniel Bowen said night services operate on an hourly basis, providing reassurance to people staying out late.

Mr Bowen said services operated on all rail lines except the smaller Stony Point line in Melbourne’s south-east.

“(The trains) replaced the all-night bus service that had previously been available since the 1990s,” Mr Bowen said.

“The problem with the buses was that they took quite different routes to the daytime trains, so people were not very familiar with those routes.

London Underground operates a NightTube service which operates on limited lines on Friday and Saturday nights.

Transport for London said the overnight service had cut journey times for some Londoners by an average of 20 minutes, and in some cases by more than an hour.

New York offers limited night service from midnight to 6 a.m.

Mr Bowen said Australian cities should consider opening night train services, such as Melbourne.

“I think Australian cities are increasingly becoming 24-hour cities. The idea that everyone will be home by midnight is no longer true,” he said.

“There are a lot of people out after midnight, not just on weekends but on other days of the week as well.”

‘You can’t push a button’

Converting the current Sydney Trains timetable to include night services will not be easy, according to Dr Clifton.

He said the 150-year-old Sydney Trains network required constant maintenance because some of the technology had been in use since the 1800s.

Dr Clifton said a night train service would require more staff, security, money and a revamped programme.

“Recalculating all maintenance requirements requires a lot of work, and many of these maintenance activities would have been planned months in advance.”

Dr Clifton said introducing night services would require Sydney Trains to rewrite the entire train schedule and account for additional costs.

“The key will be how much will it cost and how much will the benefits be, and that will be understanding how many people will use the service,” he said.

“They’re going to need more information about the effects of providing 24-hour service on care because … instead of having seven nights a week to do care, it’s going to be five nights a week.”

However, Dr Clifton said the option of reintroducing weekend overnight services was something worth exploring.

He said overnight services could revitalize the city’s nightlife, make it easier for essential workers to travel late at night and create a “24-hour economy.”

“Night train services, particularly at weekends, will definitely benefit or make it easier and safer for people to get home after a night out,” he said.

“They will have more confidence in their ability to navigate the city late at night and speed up their late-night journey home.”