Commuter crush … Peak hour at Wynyard Station. Photo: Peter Morris

THE state government is looking at speeding trains up, placing more staff on crowded inner-city platforms, and introducing ”screen doors” between platforms and trains to alleviate Sydney’s worsening peak hour crush.

In the longer term, Transport for NSW continues to pursue plans to convert large parts of the CityRail network to higher-frequency single-deck train operations.

But tender documents released by the department show it is trying to come up with a short-term fix for Sydney’s peak-hour capacity constraints, well before it can try the radical transformation to higher-frequency trains.

The documents show that the current maximum CityRail capacity of 24,000 people per hour through any point on the network will soon be reached at Central Station’s Platform 16 in the morning peak hour.

Transport for NSW has therefore asked consultants to come up with ways ”to increase the capacity of the affected areas of the network to enable a reliable 27,000 passengers per hour in the most cost-effective manner”.

”This may be achieved by increasing the number of trains per hour and/or increasing the number of passengers per train or a combination of both,” the documents say.

One of the options is simply running trains faster. But this might make them less reliable as they try to meet a more ambitious timetable.

Another option is to use more RailCorp staff to help spread passengers along platforms and in trains, as happens at Wynyard and Town Hall.

Another option is the introduction of ”platform screen doors.” These doors, the department says, would allow passengers to stand 50 centimetres closer to the edge of the platform. The idea is that this could reduce crowding on the platform.

The disadvantage, however, is that the doors could add to the time taken for trains to stop at stations.

The analysis will feed into the development of the government’s next transport plan, due to be finalised at the end of the year.

Transport for NSW released a discussion paper last week and called for submissions on the plan. The discussion paper makes only marginal reference to the work Transport for NSW has already put into converting parts of the CityRail network to higher-frequency single-deck trains.

Transport for NSW has also released tenders for a separate study into the technical difficulties of attempting this conversion.