What is the latest information on CityRail patronage?
Mr JOHN WATKINS: Honourable members will remember that I updated the House a little earlier this week on improvements to the on-time running of trains. There has been a jump from about 60 per cent of services running on time to 90 per cent of services running on time. Today I can advise the House of further evidence of gradual improvements in our rail system. Community confidence is returning to our rail system, slowly but surely, and travellers are catching our trains in significant numbers. In the four months to the end of 2005 patronage increased by 1.4 million under the new timetable compared with the same period in 2004. That means an extra 90,000 passengers were using our train system every week in the last four months of last year compared with a year earlier. The growth is strongest on the major metropolitan Sydney lines. In the central business district [CBD] there was a 4.2 per cent increase, or an extra 24,000 passengers a week. On the western line there was 3.8 per cent gro
