Passengers held on to handrails after a door stayed open on a driverless Metro racing underneath Sydney, with a transport union later calling for the system to be shut down until safety measures were put in place.
A “door fault” was identified on a train travelling between Chatswood and Crows Nest stations at about 8.01am on Wednesday, the Metro Trains Sydney chief executive, Daniel Williams, said in a statement.
Two staff members – a “customer journey coordinator” and a “customer operations lead” – were onboard the service at the time, Williams said.
Attempts to remotely fix the door were unsuccessful. The operational control centre then instructed frontline staff to manually close the door.
Two staff members stood near the open door until the train came to a stop at the next station where the door could be closed, Williams said. It was then removed from service.
“We apologise to customers for the concern this caused. The matter is under investigation,” the Metro CEO said.
The NSW government said every Metro train had at least one staff member onboard.
The RTBU secretary, Toby Warnes, said the two staff members “were put at incredible risk”.
“We’re very lucky this morning that there was a staff member on the train qualified to at least provide some safety assurance to the passengers,” the union official said.
“We could have easily this morning have had passengers with no supervision at all on a train traveling up to 100km/h through a confined tunnel all by themselves at an open doorway.”
Warnes called for an “immediate investigation” by the NSW government “to ensure that this sort of thing and the safety culture that’s been allowed to develop at Sydney Metro is fixed”.
The union called on Sydney Metro to cease operating until interim safety measures were put in place – and reiterated the need for workers to be manning driverless trains.
Videos circulating online of the train speeding through a tunnel with passengers near the open door were “harrowing,” Warnes said in a statement.
“Anyone wondering why we need workers on our Metro services only needs to look at this video.
“You can’t have trains – Metro or otherwise – driving without qualified people on board to keep passengers safe in the event things go wrong. As we’ve seen this morning, unfortunately, things do go terribly wrong sometimes. It’s a miracle that no one was hurt, or worse.”
He told reporters: “This is one of the worst safety incidents we’ve seen on any train across the New South Wales trains network in some years.”
Additional reporting Elias Visontay
