Large sums of money are changing hands: Melbourne train network operator Connex has been fined $62 million for poor performance since April 2004 while tram operator Yarra Trams has been slugged just under a million bucks for the first three months of 2007.

However, these hefty fines shouldn’t be a problem for the private companies running Victoria’s public transport infrastructure. The Victorian government paid them $1.2 billion in subsidies between 1999 and 2006, with the subsidy total tipped to hit $2.1 billion by 2010.

Why would these companies make any effort to improve their services if they know any fines paid will be reimbursed many times over in the form of ever-increasing subsidies?

Back when Lynne Kosky became Victoria’s public transport minister she tried to solve the system’s substantial problems but pretending they didn’t exist. You see, the poor punctuality of train and tram services is all relative; punctuality was poor relative to commuters’ expectations which were unreasonable. How dare the public transport user expect their train to arrive at the time published in the timetable?

Now that Ms Kosky has acknowledged that commuters’ punctuality demands are probably reasonable she has decided to try and fix the problem. However, she’s not fixing the problem by making the service more reliable, rather she’s pledged to improve “personal and electronic communications with passengers” to show them that the system “cares” when totally failing the commuter.

Lynne Kosky is fast becoming a farce of a minister.