Little by little, normality is creeping back to daily life in the Harbour City. A sure sign of this is the announcement that Sydney’s passenger rail network will be back to full capacity from February 28 to meet increasing demand from commuters. Services have been reduced since January 10 due to the impacts of the Omicron surge on the number of daily passengers heading into the city.
The reinstatement of the network's capacity means there will be more express services from the city’s outskirts and more frequent departures, offering greater flexibility for hundreds of thousands of Sydneysiders who commute every day. There will, of course, still be some health protocols in place such as mask mandates on trains and platforms and the now-familiar green dot stickers denoting where passengers can sit. Regional services outside of the Sydney Metropolitan area will also maintain a reduced service for the time being.
Premier Dominic Perrottet has made encouraging people back into the city, particularly the white-collar workforce, a priority, saying that it was the state government’s “civic duty” to reinvigorate the CBD and its ailing economy.