ABOUT US

Central Coast Newspapers

Pty Ltd (CCN) is a locally owned and operated, independent news media business, providing local print and digital news to communities across the Central Coast.

CCN publishes the Coast Community News weekly with over 33,000 copies available via more than 250 distribution points all across the Central Coast.

Most stories can be viewed on coastcommunitynews. com.au

CCN seeks to uphold the core purpose of the free press, that is, to provide real, publicinterest journalism without fear or prejudice, to keep communities informed about local issues and events and to ensure powerful interest groups, public and private, are held to account.

Our news content is originated through our own team of experienced, local journalists as well as external sources, including media releases and public notices. All our content is subject to strict editorial standards (available on the website).

Ross Barry, Publisher

Even after services resumed major delays ensued. Perrottet apologised for the chaos just weeks out from the state election.

He ordered a free day of travel as compensation for the failures, saying “These challenges occur from time to time”.

But details of the fare-free day are yet to be announced. The situation arose after the failure of the digital radio system which train controllers use to communicate with rail crews, NSW Transport Management Centre spokesperson Derrick Peterson said.

Rail users were advised by staff at Gosford station to consider other forms of transport as staff were unsure how long the outage would last.

Sydney Trains CEO Matt Longland said a communications system upgrade occurred over the weekend prior, but his advice was the failures were unrelated.

Chief Operations Officer for Transport for NSW Howard Collins told ABC Radio Sydney that the radio system failure was significant.

“We’ve not had a similar incident across the rail network with this particular system,” he said.

Retiring Transport Minister David Elliot speculated that it could have been caused by “foreign interference or industrial sabotage”, though these statements were rebuffed on Thursday, March 9, by senior managers at Sydney Trains, who said the network had been stopped for safety reasons due to a digital train radio system failure.

The NSW Labor Party jumped on the failure, with Shadow Transport Minister Jo Haylen saying the government’s own Minister was at fault.

“The lights were out across Sydney trains but they were also out in the retiring Transport Minister’s office,” she said.

An internal investigation has been initiated to get to the bottom of the problems.

David Abrahams