Trains again won’t be running today on the Bendigo and Maryborough lines.
V/Line has this morning (Wednesday, July 9th) provided an update on its network outage confirming that no services will run to, nor from Southern Cross Station in Melbourne.
Commuters have been advised to defer all non-essential travel, with a “limited number” of replacement buses to operate for “essential travel only”.
Services were first suspended yesterday morning with the nationwide Telstra outage being directly blamed for the cause.
In an interview with our newsroom, V/Line CEO Will Tieppo said the organisation operates on a “national regional rail communications network” which relies on Telstra.
That led the state opposition to ponder why the system hadn’t been backed-up.
“It beggars belief that our entire regional train network can be shut down because of a mobile outage,” Shadow Emergency Services Miniter Danny O’Brien said in a statement.
“Where is the back-up plan? Why doesn’t the government have contingencies in place for these sorts of outages?”
That question was put to Mr Tieppo by us, who said: “The upgrading of that national network involves a significant amount of investment across the nation, and that’s probably something that we’ll continue to work with the Department of Transport and Planning on in terms of… whether a further back-up is required across the network.”
He also took the opportunity to thank V/Line passengers for their patience.
“They’ve been fantastic to our staff, and I think they’ve fully understood… the huge consequence of the outage,” Mr Tieppo said.
For further updates, head to V/Line’s website.
The state government has been contacted for comment.
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