Cost, safety trumps passengers’ desire for flip seats on new trains

The NSW Government continue to bungle every transport project they get their hands on.

Today it has been revealed that the NSW Government have recklessly wasted millions of tax payer dollars on researching what commuters want, only to then completely disregard their interests. Read the story below.

SMH

They are the seat of choice for NSW train passengers.

But the top transport bureaucrats opted for the opposite to reversible seats for the state’s fleet of new intercity trains the state government is buying for $2.3 billion.

Now internal documents released under freedom of information laws show why the state’s lead transport agency chose fixed seats for the new intercity trains despite its own research revealing “a strong customer appeal and usage of reversible seating” and a perception that fixed seating was a “backward step”.

While passengers had a “general preference for flip seats”, a “sensitive” briefing document for Transport Minister Andrew Constance several months before he awarded the contract for the new trains in 2016 said there “is no proven design solution that meets safety requirements”.

Read the full story on the SMH.