TfNSW Customer Satisfaction Survey May 2025

[tonyp]

TfNSW has released the results of its latest customer survey for Sydney suburban and outer metropolitan services.

Overall satisfaction is much as for previous surveys, apart from satisfaction with Sydney Trains being in steady decline. Metro and Ferries rate at 98% overall, trams at 93% and buses at 88%, all of these figures remaining pretty steady over a number of years. Satisfaction with trains has fallen to 84%.

The strongest point with the trains was ease of ticketing, the weakest cleanliness. Areas of less satisfaction were timeliness, frequency and length of journey time. Station comfort and personal space on trains were issues, as was information about service delays.

For buses, the strongest point again was ease of ticketing, the weakest, information in general and about service delays. Other weaker points were timeliness and frequency, comfort at bus stops, personal space on the bus and availability of next stop information on the bus.

For ferries the strongest point was safety and security, the weakest availability of information. A little concern about service frequency was the only other slight negative blip.

For trams, there was significant satisfaction with the accessibility and dissatisfaction about customer service, including lack of knowledge by staff. There was also a little concern about comfort at tram stops, journey time, seat availability and personal space on the tram and, yet again, information about service delays.

For metro, passengers were most satisfied with safety and security and least about crowding. Accessibility was rated very highly. There was less satisfaction with the ease of getting to metro stations, which is an external issue in TfNSW's court.

I would comment that some of the negative issues have featured in these surveys for years, but nothing ever seems to be done about them, notably provision of service information during journeys. Complaints about crowding are sometimes in the what-do-you-expect category, though on the other hand they can indicate that not enough services are being provided.

In terms of the arguments that sometimes rage back and forth about which mode is the most comfortable to travel on, it's interesting to note that seat comfort is rated highest on the ferries, second on the metro, third on the tram and fourth equal on the buses and suburban trains. In terms of ride comfort, the rail modes aren't assessed, but for the others, the ferries are rated the best ride comfort and buses the worst.

https://www.transport.nsw.gov.au/system ... 2025_0.pdf

[Merc1107]

I often ponder the reliability of these surveys. Without knowing what services they targeted to meet quota (and how many services were targeted), how do we know this monitor properly represents the bulk of customers? For example, if the random sampling took them to a quieter part of the network, of course satisfaction will be higher than if they concentrated on high-patronage areas of the network where overcrowding, missed stops (from full services), missed services and delays will have higher impact. In Queensland, Translink will email surveys to people with a gocard periodically about a trip they took, and their experience on the network generally (I am unsure if other in-person surveys take place or not), which seems like a more reliable way to discover trends in passenger perception of the network and issues specific to a particular route than a periodic, face-to-face survey.

However, these "Passenger Perception/Satisfaction Surveys" don't try to sample people who don't, or won't use public transport, which is a significant short-coming in trying to determine what keeps people away from transit; besides captive passengers, if people continue to use a service, of course it's not so terrible as to drive them away. If people use transit for their work commute, but not leisure, why not? If for leisure but not work, why? The most obvious indicator in the actual quality of transit is its almost universally-abysmal modeshare across the nation (with inner-city areas of Melbourne and Sydney being relative exceptions), and patronage growth often failing to keep pace with population growth. Surveying passengers who are likely regular users strikes me as a colossal feedback loop, culminating in a lot of back-slapping among bureaucrats about their "hoardes of satisfied passengers", which will be used to justify further inaction in network improvement, network safety and enforcement initiatives, construction of new infrastructure, and the acquisition of assets (i.e. higher capacity buses), which will further stymie growth to patronage and transit modeshare.

I would comment that some of the negative issues have featured in these surveys for years, but nothing ever seems to be done about them, notably provision of service information during journeys. Complaints about crowding are sometimes in the what-do-you-expect category, though on the other hand they can indicate that not enough services are being provided.

Completely agreed. However, I think this stems from what I've described above; the headline satisfaction figure shows most users of the service are quite content (83% for Sydney Trains is quite high considering the persistent disruptions and prolonged industrial action recently), therefore, the negative feedback is considered to be nitpicking and disregarded. I doubt even the lower score from Sydney Trains' users would be sufficient to provoke a response.

[tonyp]

The main reason I posted this is that, several months back, a number of people on forums were asking about the reasons they were given forms to fill in while they were on the train etc. This is the outcome of that.