Victorian Government slammed for V/Line delays

By Ryan Bellingham

Mar 13, 2025

State Member for Murray Plains Peter Walsh has raised issue with V/Line's performance figures in Echuca. Photo by Supplied

State Member for Murray Plains Peter Walsh has criticised the Victorian Government over V/Line’s Echuca service recent performance figures.

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Echuca and Swan Hill’s punctuality, which is recorded as one figure, was at 82.9 per cent in February, the second lowest in Victoria.

The service has been among the most delayed in the state since August last year, with punctuality falling as low as 70 per cent in October.

V/Line’s long distance punctuality target is 92 per cent of services delivered on time within 10 minutes and 59 seconds.

“When it comes to the punctuality factor, the performance is all over the shop and none of it comes within coo-ee of where it should be,” Mr Walsh said.

“The people using the Echuca line have been waiting years for their track to perform at capacity, not be continually slowed down — and now they are also expected to cop late trains as a matter of routine.”

Speed restrictions, including due to extreme heat, were among the factors contributing to delays on Echuca and Swan Hill services in the past two months.

A V/Line spokesperson said current works were aiming to improve the service’s reliability, the rail operator’s other main performance metric.

“We continue to invest in upgrading and maintaining the network, with works currently under way at multiple locations on the Echuca line,” they said.

“The Swan Hill and Echuca lines were among the top performing lines on the network for reliability over the past 12 months.”

The lines’ reliability was at 100 per cent in February, and the spokesperson said 99.2 per cent of trains have been delivered as scheduled in the past 12 months, exceeding V/Line’s reliability target of 96 per cent.

Mr Walsh said the reliability metric represents trains being available to run for advertised services.

“While this performance is better, you would hope it was; after all, the trains are sitting there and should be good to go, shouldn’t they?” he said.

Mr Walsh said publicly available performance data from V/Line doesn’t include details on how services are affected.

“The V/Line figures don’t specify if they are impacted because of the number of times you end up being shoved on a bus, not the train you were expecting,” he said.

“Or, and this is always my favourite, because of ongoing track maintenance.

“I guarantee if trains in Melbourne performed this badly, this often, heads would roll. But when it comes to regional Victoria, not even the trains roll.”