South Australia's new Transport Minister says a commuter rail project originally promised to be finished in 2020 will now be completed in June.
Tom Koutsantonis described the project as a "hot mess" under the former Liberal government's management.
He said it knew the Gawler line electrification would not be completed this month, as it had said in the lead-up to last month's state election.
The Department for Infrastructure and Transport's website continues to say electric trains will start taking passengers in April 2022.
Mr Koutsantonis today announced fares for passengers using substitute buses for the train service to Adelaide's northern suburbs would be free from Monday.
Coaches replacing some services had already been free.
Labor also offered free substitute buses during delays to finishing the electrification of the Seaford line in 2013, something former transport minister Corey Wingard had refused to do in 2020 or last year.
"The department had advised the former government that the development of the project was going to be delayed again and that for some reason was kept from the people of South Australia before the election.
"The people of the northern suburbs now have to suffer more delays and those delays are a consequence of a project that stopped, that started, that stopped, that started.
"It's been impacted by COVID and quite frankly managed pretty poorly."
He said trains would now resume on June 30, if advice from the department was to be believed, which he doubted.
"I'm not sure if we can even rely on that," he said.
Long delays and cost increases for project
The electrification of the Gawler line was announced by the former state Labor government in 2008 as a joint-funded project with the former federal Labor government.
But when the Coalition led by Tony Abbott won the 2013 federal election, the funding was pulled and the SA government shelved the project.
It resurrected the project in early 2018 — ahead of the state election — in a stage-one announcement to build it to Salisbury.
But when the Liberal Party won the election, it resecured funding from the federal Coalition to electrify the line all the way to Gawler.
Since then, the project has been dogged by delayed opening dates after first being slated for 2020, then 2021 and finally April 2022.
In January, former Department for Infrastructure Transport chief executive Tony Braxton-Smith said welding defects in new train sets purchased for the line meant diesel trains would join electric ones on the tracks until March 2023.
New electric trains have been tested on the Gawler line since February.
Mr Koutsantonis said the cost of the project may blow out by another $60 million, bringing its total value to about $900 million.
An opposition spokesman said the department had told the then-government in February that the Gawler line would be operating by the end of April.
"Trains would have been progressively rolled out on to the line up until June 30 but Labor sacked the CEO and now we're seeing another frustrating delay," he said.
"Let's just hope Tom Koutsantonis isn't denying the people of the north their much-needed train service for a selfish political stunt."
