Photo reveals major problem with new fleet of trains
The design for Queensland’s troubled NGR trains was flawed “from day one” and will cost the government $335.7 million to fix.
A Commission of Inquiry has found the Liberal National Party state government signed off on the $4.4 billion contract in 2013, despite numerous problems with the carriages.
Yet the then-state government signed off on them because they hadn’t been told there were problems.
In particular, the trains are not compliant with disability requirements, with some walkways too narrow for wheelchairs and no disabled access to toilets on some train cars.
Other issues with the trains include faulty air conditioning and braking issues, with the catalogue of errors leading to experts declaring the trains as not legally fit for public service.
Labor and the Liberal National Party have been warring over who is to blame for the bungle, with the procurement and delivery phases of the project spanning three different governments.
The procurement process began under Anna Bligh’s Labor government, when current Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk was the transport minister.
It was signed off by Campbell Newman’s LNP government, which boasted at the time that it had secured a better deal for the project than the one Labor had proposed.
The first trains were delivered after Labor returned to power in 2015.
Inquiry head Michael Forde said people in Queensland Rail and the Department of Transport identified the compliance problems before the contracts were signed in 2013, but didn’t take the issues to decision-makers.
“There would have been people at middle-to-lower management who didn’t escalate problems and perhaps were afraid of giving bad news,” Mr Forde said on Monday.
“There seemed to be an attitude that ‘we’d fix it later on’ as an appendage rather than an important part of the process.”
Mr Forde said the disability sector was not consulted properly about what was needed on the new trains, which meant the designs were flawed “from day one”.
His report makes 24 recommendations, all of which have been accepted by the current Labor state government.
The cost to rectify all 75 trains will now be $335.7 million, more than double what was initially expected.
The “enhanced” rectification works will include a second toilet on all the NGR trains and increasing the size of the toilet module.
The works will be done in the southeast Queensland city of Maryborough by local engineering company Downer.
They start next year, with all the completed trains due to be in service before early 2024.
Downer has been given a $10 million state government grant to build a special facility to carry out the work, which is not part of the $335.7 million price tag for the project.
