Melbourne tram passengers are being left stranded as the network operator tries to avoid huge fines for missing its punctuality targets.
Yarra Trams short shunted almost 11,000 tram services to get back on time last month, more than 350 times a day on average, leaked figures show.
March was Yarra Trams' worst month in more than a year, with 78.5 per cent of the city's trams running on schedule according to PTV monitoring, which counts a tram as on-time when it is less than five minutes late or one minute early.
But that official figure does not take into account the thousands of times when a tram failed to even reach the end of the line before reversing direction.
A total of 10,980 tram services in March were "shorts", a leaked internal performance report shows. Â
This compares with 8300 shorts in March 2016 and represents a sharp 25 per cent deterioration in performance from one year to the next for Yarra Trams.
Short shunting is the term for when a tram service is terminated and the tram is turned back before it has reached the end of the route.Â
According to the internal report, Yarra Trams has calculated that it will be fined $2.05 million for its poor performance in March, under the terms of its franchise agreement with the state.
In some cases the expected penalties for short runs and cancellations topped $100,000 a day, the report shows.
Collisions with cars, pedestrian knock downs, passenger falls, overhead power failures and train cancellations also contributed to the very high number of short runs.
Under its contract, Yarra Trams receives bonuses and penalties based a complex formula of how many passengers are affected by delayed or cancelled trams.Â
Short-shunted services incur a penalty, though this penalty might be smaller than allowing a late-running tram to continue to the end of the line.Â
Yarra Trams spokeswoman Amelia Cater said there were 104 collisions between trams and vehicles in March, more than any month in at least eight years, and this was largely the cause of the huge number of short services.
Crashes can take hours to clear and make it impossible to keep to the timetable, she said.
"The decision to stop a tram short of its destination is almost always made to ensure trams aren't banked up nose-to-tail leaving passengers stranded," Ms Cater said.
Some short-shunted trams immediately begin to collect waiting passengers in the other direction, who otherwise would be left stranded.
But Phil Altieri​, tram division secretary of the Rail, Tram and Bus Union, said Yarra Trams' performance in March, the first month it reverted from a quieter summer timetable to a regular schedule, was a sign the operator was incapable of sticking to the timetable without cutting corners.
Tram drivers "are getting pushed to reduce running time, and it's not realistic", he said.
This included putting dozens of the company's slowest drivers on an "improvement program" in an effort to train them to do their job more speedily.
Mr Altieri said that rather than target drivers who struggle to stick to an unrealistic schedule, the timetable should be reviewed to accurately reflect the time it takes to safely travel along each route.
Increased traffic congestion and unrealistic tram travel times were a dangerous mix, he said.
"Once you put pressure on people to do things they perhaps shouldn't it becomes a safety risk," he said.
The number of short services Yarra Trams runs from month to month has never been publicly revealed, unlike the practice of station skipping by Metro Trains.
Station skipping has fallen to negligible levels since Public Transport Victoria began to publish the figure each month.
In March, just one Metro service skipped stations, PTV data shows, compared with a high of 322 services in May 2014 when Metro readily skipped stations to stay on time.
The Andrews government has indicated it wants to introduce tougher financial penalties against Yarra Trams for short shunting in the next phase of the franchise agreement, which is being negotiated with Yarra Trams' owner, Keolis Downer.
The current eight-year agreement will expire in November.
The official March punctuality result of 78.5 per cent was inside Yarra Trams' contractual monthly performance target of 77 per cent, meaning passengers were ineligible for compensation, but the result did not factor in the impact to passengers of cutting short thousands of services.
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